Western harvest mice build small, round nests woven into grass and low shrubs rather than digging burrows, and they favor damp, weedy cover, which lines up with why Texas’s records for this mouse lean toward the wetter, better-vegetated pockets of the Trans-Pecos: Big Bend, Guadalupe Mountains, and the Davis Mountains all offer riparian strips and mountain drainages inside an otherwise dry region.
Texas has 967 records, a solid sample, and the monthly counts show a clear cool-season peak: March alone accounts for over 200, with January and April also strong, then a steady decline through summer and fall. That shape likely tracks both breeding activity and how much grass cover is available to survey.
NatureServe ranks the species S5, Secure, in Texas, the top rank on the scale, consistent with a widespread if under-recorded mouse rather than one of conservation concern.
Full species profile
