Wisconsin’s occurrence databases hold 6,483 white-footed mouse records, more than almost any other mapped mammal in the state, most of them logged between June and September.
A generalist at home on every edge
White-footed mice turn up wherever brushy cover meets open ground: the brush piles and oak edges at Devil’s Lake State Park, the pine-oak sand country bordering Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, and the bottomland hardwood forest along the Upper Mississippi River National Wildlife and Fish Refuge. They climb into shrubs and low tree cavities as readily as they use ground burrows, caching seeds and nuts and rounding out the diet with insects and fruit through the growing season.
A summer of litters behind the record spike
Wisconsin’s white-footed mouse records climb steeply through summer and peak in September, tracking a breeding season that runs from spring into fall and can produce several litters. Each new litter of young mice moving out to find its own territory adds more animals on the landscape and more chances for a record, before surface activity thins out again as the weather turns and the mice spend more time under cover.
Status in Wisconsin
NatureServe ranks the white-footed mouse S5, secure, in Wisconsin, and it’s native to the state. It’s one of the most frequently recorded small mammals here, turning up in nearly every wooded or brushy corner of the state from the Driftless Area to the Northwoods.
Full species profile
