But one day I picked up a list of the wildlife at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge and it listed cottontails as a known species on the refuge, not native to the Northwest but here nevertheless. I went back to my guide wondering if I had missed something, but there was no mention of cottontails out here.
A quick web search revealed that cottontails are indeed the common rabbit out here now, and what I thought I knew turned out not to be true. The guide had other introduced species like nutria, so up until that point I hadn’t much reason to doubt it. Come to think of it, though, it doesn’t list eastern gray squirrels or eastern fox squirrels as being out here either, and they’re both the common squirrels in the cities (and spreading ever further).
I came across this particular cottontail at Ridgefield one spring day. They are normally easily spooked, but as I stood still on the path, it not only didn’t run off but at one point came right up next to me and sniffed my boots and pant legs. It apparently decided I wasn’t quite what it had in mind for its next meal and went back to munching on the soft young growth at the edge of the path.
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Friend or Foe?
A cottontail pauses from its grazing to figure out if I'm friend or foe. I was kneeling down to get to eye level with it, and given my distance thanks to the telephoto lens, it decided I wasn't a threat. Cottontails can be pretty tame in some areas but this one at Huntington Beach State Park seemed pretty wary, perhaps having alligators nearby does that to you.
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Mouthful of Clover
This cottontail was happily munching away in a field full of clover at the Virginia Tech Duck Pond in Blacksburg, Virginia. In this picture, he's got his mouth stuffed full of clover.
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