Rhode Island’s striped skunk record stands at 107, spread through all five counties with Providence, Washington, and Bristol leading. The map favors the grassy, settled parts of the state, Colt State Park on Narragansett Bay, the fields of Bridgham Farm and Nicholas Farm Management Area, and coastal edges from Beavertail to Fort Adams State Park and Prudence Island.
A digger of lawns and field edges
Skunks eat mostly insects, and they mine for them, leaving small conical holes in turf where they have dug out beetle grubs and ground-nesting bees. Grubs, crickets, and worms make up the bulk of the diet, rounded out with mice, eggs, and fallen fruit, so a skunk is at home anywhere soft ground and open grass meet cover, from pasture edges and cemeteries to shoreline lawns. It works at night and on its own schedule, ambling with its nose down, confident that few predators will press an attack on an animal armed as it is.
Summer peaks and a quiet winter
The record peaks in June and again from August into September, when insect prey is thickest on the ground and the year’s young skunks have left the den to forage on their own. Through the coldest weeks the counts fall away to almost nothing. Skunks do not truly hibernate, but they den up in burrows through cold snaps, often several sharing one den, and stir only on mild nights until the spring thaw brings them out for good.
Status in Rhode Island
NatureServe ranks the striped skunk S5, Secure, in Rhode Island, and the species is native to the state. USGS NAS does not list it as nonindigenous here.
Full species profile
