Every recorded smoky shrew sighting in Pennsylvania comes from GBIF specimen and trapping-survey data rather than iNaturalist photographs, unsurprising for an animal that spends its life under leaf litter and is rarely seen alive. Reports cluster in Allegheny National Forest, Delaware Water Gap, and Ricketts Glen State Park, all places with the damp, decaying forest floor this shrew forages through for insects and worms.
Sightings run through every month but peak sharply in July, likely tied to when small-mammal trapping surveys are most active rather than to any summer population swell. NatureServe calls the smoky shrew Secure statewide, S5, yet it ranks among the rarer Pennsylvania mammals by recorded sightings, a gap that reflects how few researchers go looking for shrews, not how scarce the animal actually is.
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