Pearson-1989 29 Note that the trapping has improved enormously since October/November, yet only two of the catch were juveniles. Day became increasingly sunny. Processed mice. Bern\ey (Jehovas Witness) visited, then Patricia, then lunch with Gwenn and Josh. December 14 - Bariloche. Michaael Christie visited. Then set traps with Adrian Monjeau at 11km NNE Nahuel Huapi. Evening mild, calm, full moon. I set 26 Shermans and 26 MS alternating, between the two fences along the highway, and Adrian set 27 Sher mans, same habitat. Sandy soil, neneo, Senecio, a little bunchgrass. Lots of hare sign. Slept next to the tu cos, but heard none during the night. Picked up traps at 8 a.m. Adrian had 4 Akodon xanthorhinus and 2 Bliigmodontia. I had 7 Bligmo andf 3 xantho. 6 of mine in Sher mans, 4 in MS. Then visited the Parques office (Carlos Martin, Monica Mermoz, Eduardo, and Chehebar. Chehebar was off looking for a lost otter. Talked with Monica about bamboo. She had a written report and map from the park guard at Tronador giving locations of blooming bamboo plants, but no mass blooming. Met Michael Christie and Laurance Sympson at Estancia La Primavera at 6:30 p.m. Sympson drove us to a rock spire at the river end of a terminal moraine about 2km downstream from the ranch headquarters. On Baily Willis's topo sheet seems to be 10km NW Confluencia. There is a raptor perch on top of the spire, and a cave on the upstream side of the cave (with a family of torrent ducks in the river below). The cave is not deep or dark, more a scooped out place with a lot of fallen rock on the slanting floor. In places are accumulations of handfuls of mouse droppings of about Phyllotis size. In a few places are old Lagidium droppings. Sympson has not seen vizcachas here. In places, packed under rock slabs or in rocky crevices are black or dark brown accumulations of organic/material, sort of like peat but frequently denser. When picked up or pried loose, these accumulations may or may not have individually distinct rodent droppings incorporated in them. There may also be a stratification of old grassy vegetable fiber. In other places are rounded masses of hard, black, shiny, tar-like material. These blobs are sometimes fastened directly onto clean, vertical, or even overhanging rock surfaces and have to be knocked off by powerful blows with a rock. There seems to be a gradation of hardness from peat to obsidian. Also lying among the rocks on the ground were assorted loose bones and predator droppings from weasel size to fox size. No owl or hawk pellets. Among the bones picked up by the three of us were Phyllotis, Akodon longipilis, Reithrodon, Buneomys, small bird, lizard, and snake (curved mandible with backward-pointing sharp teeth). Also a few small droppings composed of orange crustacean parts, a few Buneomys droppings. One dropping, or pellet, rather tightly compacted,