Moles above
Dear All,
I am working on a paper about surface foraging in moles (marsupial moles, golden moles and shrew-moles are not included; I don’t yet know if I’ll focus on just North American species or Eurasian ones as well). If you have any relevant observations, please share.
BTW, if you’ve never seen a mole, I’ve just found a place where it is easy: Bidwell Mansion State Historic Park in downtown Chico, California. Just walk to the back wall of the visitor center, where an elevated concrete sidewalk borders a large lawn. There are tons of broad-footed moles there, and at night you can just sit on the boardwalk and watch them digging and sometimes crawling around under your feet. There are adults and small juveniles right now, I saw them on surface three times in one night. They seem to prefer light rain, and don’t show up if anybody is walking nearby. They don’t tolerate white flashlights, either – use a red one.
10 Comments
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Jon Hall
This is the same park you saw your Mountain Gophers in , right? Seems like THE place for fossorial mammals 🙂
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vnsankar
Botta’s Pocket Gophers, not Mountain Pocket Gophers. I see the gophers often in April and early May, but I’ve only seen the mole once in 4 years. I haven’t spent too much time actively looking for them though…
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vdinets
No, the gophers were in the one called simply Bidwell Park. But they are only a few minutes apart by car.
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Joseph K. Green
I’ve seen a mole ,probably Scapanus orarius, walking midday, along rocky and sandy shore of the San Francisquito Creek,. The creek runs from Searsville Lake(Palo Alto) in Santa Clara county and the border of Menlo Park(San Mateo county, to the S.F. bay.
The creek for much of it’s length, consist of riparian woodland. -
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vnsankar
Cool info! I may go and check it myself in a couple of weeks. Will it still be possible to see them then?
In case you’re interested, I saw a Broad-footed Mole foraging next to a trail one morning after a night of rain near Rancho San Antonio County park (Cupertino, CA) a couple of years ago. Haven’t seen a mole, live or dead, since.