Eastern Cottontail

Description

Eastern Cottontail is the smallest of Minnesota’s Leporidae, weighing 2 to 4 pounds at maturity.

Mearns’s Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) is rusty-brown in color.

Nebraska Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus similis) is gray.

Size

Total length: 16″ to 19″

Tail: 1¼″ to 2½″

Sign

Similar Species

Snowshoe Hare (Lepus americanus), found in northern Minnesota, is slightly larger than the Eastern Cottontail. It is uniformly dark brown in the summer and turns white in the winter.

White-tailed Jackrabbit (Lepus townsendii) is much larger, weighing 5¾ to 9½ pounds at maturity. It turns white in the winter.

Habitat

Eastern Cottontail is found in a wider variety of habitats than any other cottontail species. Any habitat that includes well-distributed, dense shrubs for escape cover interspersed with open, grassy areas is ideal for this species. These include farmlands, old fields, pastures, hedgerows, orchards, brushy clearings, open woods, wooded thickets, edges of woodlands, and suburban areas with adequate cover.

Ecology

Behavior

Lifespan

3 to 5 years

Life Cycle

Food

In the spring, summer, and fall, Eastern Cottontails feed on a wide variety of plant matter, including grasses (about half of it’s diet), clover, wild strawberry, cultivated and wild flowers, and many types of cultivated crops.

During the winter months they feed on twigs, bark and buds of oak, dogwood, sumac, maple and birch. They may girdle fruit trees and ornamental shrubs.