January 14, 2000

     Cottontail Rabbits

If there is a fresh coating of snow overnight in southern Minnesota, there will be cottontail tracks on the landscape at the crack of dawn.  The neighborhood cottontails seem to be the first animals out and about.  Actually, they are active from early evening through the night and into the morning.  It is not surprising to see a neighborhood well-tracked at sunrise.

The eastern cottontail is native to southernmost Quebec and Saskatchewan, through most of the central and eastern United States, much of Mexico, and parts of Central America.  It is absent from the northernmost part of Minnesota.  Cottontails prefer partially open brush areas, wooded swamps, woodland edges and wooded fence rows.  They avoid both prairie and closed forest and are not common in intensively managed agricultural land.  However, they do well in residential areas where there is adequate cover.

It is not unusual in Minneapolis to see cottontail tracks in the snow, crisscrossing lawns and parks.  The cottontail rabbit is one of the few native animals that has benefited from civilization.  They are much more plentiful today than they were when early European settlers began to cut the forests and plow the land for farming.  Each cottontail has its own home territory -- usually smaller than 5 acres -- it seldom leaves.