Rabbits are almost universally loved.* Dan and I certainly love them, but we don’t see many of them here because foxes and coyotes love them even more.
The species we see here in our backyard is the eastern cottontail rabbit. It’s the most common rabbit species in the US and it’s found everywhere from southern Canada down to northern South America.
Rabbits are crepuscular, like deer – they are most active at dawn and dusk – although our cameras frequently catch them hopping along the trails in the middle of the night. We only occasionally see them out during the day.
Eastern cottontails eat grass and leaves. We have plenty of both. Whenever our livestream watchers comment that they’ve seen a bunny, I find myself responding that I wish we had more of them. They’re beautiful little creatures, entirely harmless, and very picturesque.
* I say “almost” because for many decades they were loathed in New Zealand and Australia. I think they’re probably still listed as noxious pests in both countries. Why? Well, European settlers, nostalgic for the wildlife species they’d left behind when they emigrated to the Antipodes, introduced rabbits in both countries and their populations exploded. In NZ, where I’m from, rabbits had absolutely no natural predators and, suddenly, a few cute bunnies hippity-hopping across the fields became millions and millions of rabbits stripping the pastures clean of grass while the sheep and cattle stood around wondering where their lunch had gone.
It was an ecological disaster, and the attempted solution was horrible.
A deadly viral disease called myxomatosis, which only affects rabbits, was introduced. Myxomatosis is spred by biting bugs like fleas, specifically the rabbit flea. In Australia, the mortality rate was 99%, but the rabbits who survived passed their immunity on to their descendents and eventually populations rebounded. In NZ myxomatosis didn’t work at all because there were no rabbit fleas to do the job of transmission. The government paid full-time rabbit shooters to keep populations down, and – oh dear – introduced stoats, ferrets and weasels. The new predators have had little impact on bunny populations but have proven to be lethal for native birds. We should have known better, right?
#texasbackyardwildlife