The Eastern Bunny

By Jennifer Schlick

While there are two species of rabbits and two species of hares that can be found in the Great Lakes Region, there is only one that is found where I live: the Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus). We see them regularly at Audubon. In fact, people see them in their yards and gardens throughout their range which stretches east of the Rockies from southern Canada down through Mexico wherever habitat is appropriate. Eastern Cottontails like areas where there are plenty of herbaceous plants to eat and plenty of shrubs or brush piles to provide shelter.

The Eastern Cottontail is a small brownish mammal whose tail is dark above and white below, giving it the second part of its name. It may be fifteen to nineteen inches long and weigh two to four pounds. Active throughout the year, you can find plenty of evidence of their activity in the winter: footprints in the snow, browsing, and scat.

Footprints are misleading. I’ll always ask students to guess which way the animal was traveling and they usually guess wrong. When you see a set of tracks, separated by quite a distance from the next set of four, it’s the back tracks that are pointing the direction of travel.

Browsing evidence is easiest to find in winter when the rabbits’ diet changes from soft green plants to bark and twigs. Small branches that have been neatly clipped at a forty-five degree angle are most likely the result of a rabbit’s meal. The front incisors – top and bottom – snip off twigs as easily as garden shears, then peel off bark for a tasty treat. Rabbits’ incisors never stop growing, so they MUST gnaw to keep them in check.

Scat is round – about the shape and color of Cocoa Puffs cereal. Yum, yum. And speaking of eating scat, rabbits do. Not the round, brown ones, though. Here’s the scoop on rabbit poop: Rabbits and hares have an extensive “cecum” – an outcropping of the large intestine. It is full of bacteria that break down tough plant material that the stomach and small intestine could not digest. The problem is neither the cecum nor the large intestines can absorb the nutrients that have been released by these bacteria. So here’s the solution: The cecum packages the material into soft, green pellets which the rabbit defecates, then reingests. Oh, I just love telling students about this. It always gets a great reaction!

As winter gives way to spring, the Eastern Cottontail will have more succulent treats to eat. Soon, mothers will be digging shallow “forms” which they will line with hair from their own bodies. In these forms, they will give birth to their kits which they will cover with leaves when they go off to eat. Last year, we found a form full of baby rabbits right in Audubon’s garden near the entry way!

Those are facts about the eastern bunny… now what about the Easter Bunny?

According to several sources, the first Sunday following the first full moon after the Vernal Equinox was celebrated for centuries before Christ as the festival of Eostre, the Teutonic goddess of dawn and spring. Eostre’s symbols were the rabbit and the egg, both representing fertility and re-birth. It is a time in many parts of the world where cultures are celebrating the rebirth of vegetation, and the growing light. It is from the goddess’s name that Christians in Germany and Britain took “Easter” as the name of the feast that would celebrate the resurrection of Jesus. Oh, it’s all very complicated, actually.

What’s not complicated is that spring is coming and you can observe it right outside your window, or by coming down to Audubon. We’re located at 1600 Riverside Road in the town of Kiantone, one quarter mile east of Route 62 between Jamestown, NY and Warren, PA. For more information, call 716-569-2345 or visit our website at http://www.jamestownaudubon.org.

Jennifer Schlick is Program Director at Audubon.

(This article was adapted from another post on my nature blog: http://winterwoman.wordpress.com/2008/03/12/eastern-bunny/.)