Plant Problem Diagnostic
What's Digging Up My Lawn at Night?
The short answer
The two usual nighttime suspects leave different signatures. Skunks dig an array of small individual holes, often clustered close together. Raccoons tend to roll or lift up whole pieces of sod, leaving the grass in discrete flipped-back chunks, as if someone started stripping turf. Squirrels, by contrast, leave small daytime depressions about two inches across, and birds like flickers, starlings, and crows probe holes in daylight.
They are digging for food, mainly insect larvae such as beetle grubs, but also earthworms. Maryland Extension warns against assuming grubs are the reason: verify a high grub population by peeling back a square foot of sod and counting before using any grub control product, because treating a grub-free lawn does nothing to stop the digging.
Immediate protection is physical: lay chicken wire, hardware cloth, or bird netting over the damaged area and stake it down so digging is unrewarding, press rolled sod back in place, and water it. If grub counts are genuinely high, deal with the grubs on the proper late-summer schedule.
Read the damage
- Skunks: many small individual holes clustered together, appearing overnight.
- Raccoons: sod rolled, lifted, or torn back in chunks, also overnight, and often more destructive per visit.
- Squirrels: scattered small depressions about two inches wide and a few inches deep, no distinct soil pile, dug in daytime for burying or retrieving food.
- Birds (flickers, crows, jays, starlings, grackles, wild turkeys): daytime probing and small holes, often following insect activity.
- Tunnels with raised ridges or conical soil mounds are moles, and runways through grass are voles; those are different problems covered on their own pages.
Check for grubs before treating for grubs
Digging could mean a grub infestation, or it could mean your lawn is simply rich in earthworms, which are good for the soil and not a treatable pest. Cut and peel back a square foot of sod in a few dug-over areas and count the C-shaped white larvae. Thresholds from Extension sources run roughly 5 to 12 grubs per square foot before turf damage justifies control; below that, the animals may still visit, but insecticide will not change their behavior and is not warranted.
If counts are high, treat the grub problem on its own correct timing (curative in late summer while grubs are small) rather than reacting to the animal damage in spring, when treatment is least effective.
Protect and repair the lawn
Iowa State Extension's practical fix is exclusion at the surface: secure hardware cloth, chicken wire, or bird netting flat over the areas being dug (or over known grubby areas) with landscape staples or bricks, so a night's digging yields nothing. Animals that stop being rewarded move on.
Maryland Extension recommends focusing effort on repairing the lawn rather than trying to punish the diggers: roll or fold displaced sod back, tamp it, water it, and reseed spots that have dried out. For persistent, severe visits, the remaining options are fencing, habitat modification, or trapping, and trapping or relocating wildlife is regulated in most states, so contact your state wildlife agency or Extension office before going that route.
✔ Skip repellents and home remedies as a first move. The reliable sequence is: identify the digger, count the grubs, protect the surface, repair the turf.
Sources
Reviewed 2026-07-18. We cite university Extension, government, and established horticultural sources — and never invent pesticide rates or dangerous treatments.
- University of Maryland Extension - Animals Digging in Lawns — Skunks dig arrays of individual clustered holes while raccoons roll or lift sod in discrete chunks; squirrels leave two-inch depressions; listed birds also dig; animals seek grubs and earthworms; do not assume grubs without verifying; focus on repairing the lawn, with exclusion, habitat modification, or trapping for persistent cases.
- Iowa State University Extension - Managing Skunk and Raccoon Damage to Lawns — Lay hardware cloth, chicken wire, or bird netting over damaged or high-grub areas and secure it with landscape staples or bricks; manage grubs only when confirmed present and abundant, since diggers may be after earthworms.
- Penn State Extension - White Grubs in Home Lawns — Sampling method and the five-to-ten-grubs-per-square-foot curative threshold used to judge whether grub treatment is warranted.