Field notes, v1531
Page 363
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Transcription
Pearson - 1997 3 Shermans; I put out 10 MS and 26 Shermans. The habitat is heavily grazed nire scrub, meadows, big nires, a few coihues, lots of bamboo but almost all of it heavily grazed, lots of Berberis (3 spp.) chaura, Ribes, Usnea. 5 November- Cloudy all night, not cold, but drizzly off and on. Anita's line: MS: 10 Oligo, 2 Abro longi, 1 Abro oliv. Shermans: 13 Oligos and 3 Abro longi. My line: MS- 2 Oligo and 1 Aulisco. Shermans- 10 Oligo, 4 Abro longi, 1 Abro olivaceus. Total catch overnight: 75 traps: 35 Oligo, 9 Abro longi, 2 Abro oliv, 1 Auliscomys =47 mice == 63% trap success or 46% for Oligos. Some of the nire trees are very old; one is 2 ft. in diameter. Processed mice all day. We walked about 200m of beach and found one more carcase, an Abro longi. Cloudy and drizzly most of the day but a few patches of sun. I jacklighted for about 200 m last night in the middle of the night and saw nothing. Heard no owls, we see no hawks, hardly any chimangos. A lugareno passing camp on horseback replied, when I remarked that there were lots of mice: "There were lots more last year." When I said that people said that the flowering of the bamboo was followed by a ratada but that this year there was no flowering, he said that the bamboo was flowering "up in the mountains" and that the mice travel down. Not one of the mice dissected today, neither male nor female, was in breeding condition. Only one female was parous. Some had hemorrhagic lungs, but not all. We weighed four of the trapped Oligos while they were still dry and undissected, then soaked them in water for a time, then dried them off with paper towels in the way we had been drying the frozen beach pickups, all to get an idea of how much to sybtract form the body weight of the wet mice. The results before and after: 38.5, 40; 22.5, 23; 21, 21.5; 15.5, 16. Anita set 8 Shermans near the tent in islands of chaura, Berberis, nire, surrounded by turfy campsites. 6 November.- Middle of the night was crystal clear; no mice seen in brief jacklighting session. Heard barn owl