Western harvest mice have 70 records in Nebraska since 2000, 42 of them from Cherry County alone, yet only 5 come from iNaturalist, an overwhelming GBIF specimen and trapping-survey signature rather than casual photography. NatureServe rates the state population S5, secure, fitting a species that’s genuinely widespread across Nebraska’s grasslands but rarely seen given its tiny size and nocturnal habits.
Records peak sharply in September (29 of the year’s monthly-tallied sightings) with a secondary rise in June (17), a two-peak pattern that likely tracks survey timing and possibly a late-summer population bump rather than the mouse’s own visibility, since a dataset this GBIF-dominated says little about when people actually encounter the animal.
Full species profile
