The western harvest mouse shows up across a wide slice of New Mexico habitat: Santa Fe National Forest’s mountain edges, the wet meadows at Las Vegas National Wildlife Refuge, and the Pecos River headwaters. Wherever grass cover meets moisture, this small seed-and-plant eater finds cover from owls, snakes, and other predators.
Nearly all of the state’s 2,900-plus records come from GBIF-cataloged surveys and museum specimens rather than casual iNaturalist photos, a sign that this nocturnal mouse gets trapped more often than it gets spotted. Records show up in every month, with the heaviest clusters in March and June and a smaller rise in October, a pattern that tracks fieldwork more than the mouse’s own numbers.
NatureServe ranks the species secure across New Mexico (S5), and it’s one of the more consistently recorded small mammals in the state’s occurrence data.
Full species profile
