White-Tailed Deer
The white-tailed deer, the only deer native to North Carolina, is at home in a variety of habitats including coastal marshes and high mountain forests. In summer months, deer are found wherever there is sufficient food, water, cool shade and seclusion, usually in creek bottoms. In winter months, deer look for evergreen thickets, dense young timber stands, thick hardwood swamps, and broom sedge fields where they can find cover. Deer eat a variety of fruits and nuts, including blackberries, blueberries, apples and acorns. They also eat herbs, grasses, and the twigs and leaves of woody plants. Deer usually thrive following fires, timber harvests, storms or other events that produce new vegetative growth for cover and food.
Eastern Gray Squirrel
The gray squirrel is one of the most familiar and visible tree-dwelling mammals. It thrives in mature oak, beech, hickory and walnut trees found in both rural and urban settings. These trees provide the squirrel with nuts for food, escape from danger, and den cavities and strong branches in which to build their nests. Squirrels get their water from dew, succulent plants or from open water such as lakes and streams.
Cottontail Rabbit
Cottontails thrive in recently disturbed areas such as fields or young forests where there are plenty of low-growing shrubs and grasses that they can use for food and cover. Cottontails eat a variety of plants including bark, fruit, seeds, clover, alfalfa, soybeans, dandelions, grasses and grains, and get most of their water from succulent plants and dew. Cottontails are an important food source for larger predatory animals such as foxes, hawks and owls.
Black Bear
The black bear is the only bear native to Eastern North America. In North Carolina, it lives in mature mixed hardwood forests in the mountains and in coastal bays, swamps and pocosins in the coastal plain region. During the winter, most bears den up in hollow trees or dense evergreen cover. They have keen senses of smell and hearing, but their vision is not as good. Black bears eat a varied diet including nuts, berries, sassafras, insects and animals.
Opossum
Opossums are the only marsupial -- animals that carry their young in a pouch on the female’s abdomen -- native to North America. The opossum prefers living in moist, deciduous woodlands but also is found in prairies, marshes and farmlands. Opossums build their dens in hollow trees and logs, and in burrows dug by other animals. They are shy, secretive, nocturnal animals that eat rodents, insects, birds, lizards, snakes, decaying animals, fruits and grains.
Raccoon
Raccoons, which are rarely found far from water, live in a wide variety of habitats including mature hardwood forests, fields, tidal marshes and forested swamps. They eat a range of foods including nuts, berries, grains and corn, as well as grasshoppers, birds, crabs, frogs, fish eggs, snakes, earthworms and snails. They have highly mobile and sensitive fingers that they use for a wide variety of tasks such as eating and opening garbage can lids. Raccoons use hollow trees for shelter, escape and raising their young. They also live in rock crevices, downed trees and brush piles, and in ground dens made by woodchucks or foxes.
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