Oldfield mouse records in South Carolina center on the Sandhills, the belt of ancient dune ridges running through Carolina Sandhills National Wildlife Refuge. That deep, well-drained sand is exactly the kind of open ground this mouse needs for digging, and similar sandy patches near Sumter National Forest and Congaree National Park’s drier margins turn up records too.
This is a pale, sand-colored mouse built for open, sparsely vegetated ground rather than dense forest. It digs branching burrows with separate entrances for escape and nesting, and it feeds mostly on seeds and insects gathered close to the burrow mouth after dark.
Records run through the year without one dominant season, though counts stay low across the board. With around a hundred South Carolina records, showing up mostly in survey and specimen data rather than casual sightings, the pattern reflects where surveys have looked rather than a full picture of where the mouse occurs.
