Rabbits at Ridgefield

A close-up view of an eastern cottontail eating grass at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

Oh Boolie, Get a Taste of This Grass!

In the spring the two most easily seen mammals at Ridgefield are nutria and cottontails, neither of which are native to the Northwest, although cottontails seem to miss out on the loathing many people have for nutria. Perhaps a side benefit to being adorable.

A Little Knowledge Is A Dangerous Thing

I grew up in the east, so when we moved to Oregon, I studied my field guides to learn what new wildlife I’d be seeing when out on the trails. My Audubon guide for mammals said that the rabbits we had out here were brush rabbits, so for years I assumed the rabbits I saw were brush rabbits. But one day I picked up a list of the wildlife at Ridgefield 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).

An eastern cottontail eats in a meadow on a wet spring day at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

Eating Green

I enjoy photographing in the rain so I haven't minded the unusually wet spring here in the Northwest. This cottontail didn't seem to mind the rain either as it ate in a meadow beside the Kiwa Trail at Ridgefield.

A close-up view of an eastern cottontail near the auto tour at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

Pride Goes Before a Fall

Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. Proverbs 16:18

A while back my teleconverter started overexposing everything by a stop, so I had to remember to deliberately underexpose to prevent from blowing out the image, something I often forgot to do. Being a night owl, I was particularly pleased with myself when I arrived near sunrise at Ridgefield and, when photographing this cottontail beside the auto tour, actually remembered to dial in the underexposure.

A few moments later I got my comeuppance. As I watched a muskrat swimming with its child, I realized that while I had remembered to compensate for my faulty teleconverter, I wasn't actually using the teleconverter, so all I ended up doing was needlessly underexposing my images.

Wet & Dry

I've had the most luck photographing cottontails at Ridgefield in the spring, both because they're out in large numbers and because they are more tolerant of Boolies. Some days were dry, some days wet, but the rain dissuaded neither man nor rabbit.