How To Tell If Rabbits Are Visiting Your Backyard In Winter

It might not be a terrible thing to have rabbits in your lawn (their droppings, after all, make excellent fertilizer), but their destructive tendencies can quickly outweigh any benefits. Rabbits are most active during dawn and dusk when they can eat safely without having to worry about potential predators, which means you may not actually catch them wreaking havoc in your backyard. Instead, it's best to look for several telltale signs to confirm their presence.

As rabbits do not hibernate, they can show up in your yard in winter. If you live in a mild or warm climate with little to no snow, the biggest giveaway will be holes — lots of them. As they like to burrow and shelter underground, rabbits leave lots of small holes all over your lawn. In order to confirm that a rabbit was indeed the culprit, check to see if the dug-up area is oval and about four to six inches wide, often with disturbed soil around it.

If, on the other hand, you live in a region where temperatures dip in the winter and snow blankets the ground, you can look for a number of additional signs to confirm rabbits are visiting your backyard.

Rabbits are herbivores and when the grasses and leaves they like disappear, they switch up their diet to bark and sticks. Look for teeth marks on branches and shrubs to confirm their presence, but keep in mind that, if rabbits are to blame, the twigs will look neatly clipped rather than ripped. Another telltale sign is droppings. If you spot clusters of round, hard, brownish pellets the size of a pea, you know a rabbit has been visiting your backyard.

In addition to food, rabbits may also enter your space to seek shelter from harsh winter conditions. They like to hide behind solid fences and evergreen trees, so search these areas for the above-mentioned signs. Lastly, the most obvious confirmation will be footprints left in the snow. These will appear in a "Y" shape because, as the rabbit jumps, its larger hind legs leave prints in the front, followed by two smaller footprints in the back.

Once you've confirmed their presence, you can keep rabbits from destroying your garden in a number of humane ways. Some deterrents to try are mowing the grass to under six inches, planting onions or garlic along the perimeter of your yard, and using a metal mesh fence to protect your most cherished plants.