Species Feature #1, Eastern Cottontail (Happy Easter)!

I won't beat anyone over the head with Jesus (apparently we don't do that in the suburbs), but you will take this bunny and like it! This eastern cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus) seems content in on his mat of white clover (Trifolium repens) , but also seems to have forgotten his basket of eggs.

Before I get started, I want to wish everyone a happy belated Earth Day! For some reason I was thoroughly convinced that Easter and Earth Day were the same day this year, and I missed it. I don't feel so bad, though, because Laurel has done some work for the Earth Day Network in the past, and she was under the same false impression.

Sylvilagus floridanus Quick Facts

Common Name: Eastern cottontail

Taxonomic Breakdown (Five Kingdom Model)

• Kingdom - Animalia
• Phylum - Chordata
• Class - Mammalia
• Order - Lagomorpha
• Family - Leporidae
• Genus - Sylvilagus
• Species - floridanus

Conservation Status: Least Concern
Name of Young: Kits

Range: Northern South America to Canada, Primarily East of the Mississippi in the US

There's not a whole lot else to say about this species. If you live in this area, you are certainly familiar with it at least in passing. It eats mostly grasses, but will invade fruit and vegetable gardens for tastier treats, and subsists on twigs and bark during the winter months. The phrase "breeding like rabbits" is not without cause, but there are plenty of predators (and enough traffic) to keep the population under control. One fact that was new to me as I researched for this post was that juveniles have a distinctive and adorable white blaze on their foreheads. There are somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty subspecies, with only about five found in the US. If you want more, your safest bet is probably a Google search of the binomial name.