The eastern cottontail (Silvilagus floridanus) is commonly found in gardens, parks and well most places in and around Falls Church, VA. Best times to see them are late evening as they are mostly crepuscular (word of the day! means active in twilight as in around dusk and dawn) but they will also feed at night and sometimes just right out there in the middle of the day.
And no, rabbits are NOT rodents. This is a common misconception but they are rather quite different and are in the order Lagomorpha. This order is pretty much restricted to rabbits, hares and pikas, and just for one more tidbit, Lagomorph pretty much directly translates to "hare-like."
And no, rabbits are NOT rodents. This is a common misconception but they are rather quite different and are in the order Lagomorpha. This order is pretty much restricted to rabbits, hares and pikas, and just for one more tidbit, Lagomorph pretty much directly translates to "hare-like."
Eastern cottontail showing the famous little white tail and long ears.
And just for fun, here is my favorite photo that I took today of the rabbit.
Here's lookin' at you, rabbit
An interesting aside, from this last photo you can see that the eyes of a rabbit are so far apart that they are almost on opposite sides of the head. The down side of this is that the animal has extremely limited binocular vision, but the up side is that it can see predators coming even from pretty much right behind it. As a general rule, predators have more narrow, forward-facing eyes and prey animals have wider eyes for greater peripheral vision.
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