Georgia carries over a thousand GBIF records for this mouse, concentrated across the Coastal Plain and out to the barrier-island coast, including Cumberland Island and the Okefenokee Swamp fringe. Georgia’s fall-line sandhills, the loose, well-drained sand belt running across the middle of the state, and the dune systems on the barrier islands give it exactly the loose, open sandy ground it needs to burrow.
This is a digging specialist, not a general-purpose field mouse. It excavates a network of burrows in bare or sparsely vegetated sand, and on the barrier islands a related population known as the beach mouse lives in the dune grass right behind the surf, a habitat found nowhere else in the state. Inland, it favors old fields, sandhill scrub, and longleaf pine understory kept open by fire.
Records run year-round in Georgia with no strong seasonal gap, consistent with a resident burrower rather than a migrant.
