Vermont’s occurrence records list 417 documented short-tailed shrew sightings, 352 of them iNaturalist observations. This species spends most of its life under leaf litter and in shallow burrows, so even that count captures only the moments one comes into view.
A leaf-litter hunter across Vermont’s hardwood floor
Among public lands, records come most often from the Green Mountain National Forest and Hazens Notch State Park, where the moist duff layer beneath Vermont’s northern hardwood forest gives a short-tailed shrew the tunnels and cover it needs to hunt earthworms, insects, and snails almost around the clock. That same forest floor runs across most of the state, and records turn up in all 14 counties, led by Chittenden, Windsor, and Washington.
A late-summer rise
Records climb through August and peak in September, when young shrews weaned earlier in the summer disperse to find their own territory. A short-tailed shrew has one of the highest metabolic rates of any mammal its size and has to eat nearly its own body weight in food most days, driving it to hunt constantly rather than den up for long stretches.
Status in Vermont
NatureServe ranks the short-tailed shrew S5, secure, and it’s native to Vermont. Because it rarely surfaces in daylight, its record count says more about chance encounters than about how many shrews work the state’s forest floor.
