New Hampshire’s New England cottontail file is short and sobering: 29 records since 2000, and NatureServe ranks the species critically imperiled in the state. The county pattern holds a surprise. Merrimack County, around Concord, leads with 13 records, well inland from the Seacoast and Great Bay country that gets most of the attention, with Cheshire, Strafford, and Rockingham counties adding single digits behind it. The rabbit’s remaining ground, such as it is, looks to be the brushy valleys of the state’s southern tier.
January is the busiest month in the record, with 10 reports, which points to winter track and pellet surveys in snow rather than anything the rabbits are doing differently. They stay active all year. The usual identification caution applies double in a state where the species is this rare: the native cottontail looks almost exactly like the introduced eastern cottontail, so confirmed records rest on specimens or DNA, not photographs. Every verified record helps mark where the remaining patches are.
Full species profile
