Maryland’s rice rat record is, more than anything, a Dorchester County record. Fifty-nine of 72 reports come from that one Eastern Shore county, and 32 trace to a single property, the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Historical Park, which protects part of the great Blackwater marsh complex. Tidal marsh is exactly the animal’s element: it’s a strong swimmer that nests in cordgrass and feeds along the water’s edge.
September holds 55 of the dated reports, the mark of concentrated survey work in those marshes rather than a seasonal quirk of the rat. The species doesn’t hibernate and stays active through winter.
NatureServe considers it apparently secure in Maryland. The county map says less about where rice rats live than about where mammalogists have set traps; the Eastern Shore’s other marsh counties are thinly recorded largely because they’ve been thinly sampled.
