28 August 2010

Notes on recent trips

I put a couple  pages together on my new blog. Mostly about lifers for me/where I found mammals others might want to know about.

Arizona/New Mexico is at http://wp.me/p12yCV-4

Alaska is at http://wp.me/p12yCV-9

Any comments are probably more useful here on Mammalwatching than on my site. I am just starting to figure WordPress out, so ….

John

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6 Comments

  • 28 August 2010
    jj2b

    So…. the links are dead. Cut and paste works, though. Such things happen.

  • 29 August 2010
    vladimir dinets

    We couldn’t find a single pika in Denali this year, despite searching at locations where they used to be common.

    • 29 August 2010
      jj2b

      I feel extra lucky, then. I had seen one or two vague references to Hatcher Pass and had 10 hours till my flight, so I figured I’d go have a look.

      I am curious about lemmmings, voles and shrews in the Brooks range and above, if you saw any. Especially around Deadhorse. Nearctic Collared Lemming is one of those little guys that capture my interest.

      TIA

      • 30 August 2010
        vladimir dinets

        This is not a lemming year. We saw no lemmings whatsoever along Dalton, and only one vole. In Barrow I found a small patch with plenty of both lemming species. The patch was easy to find – it was marked by the only snowy owl I’ve seen this summer. People say 2011 is gonna be a lemming year. We saw only one fox the whole trip.
        Interestingly, there were absolutely no tundra hares, but loads of snowshoe hares (for the 3rd consecutive year, apparently), so we saw (briefly) two lynxes.
        Shrews were good this year: we saw loads at the beginning of Harding Icefield trail, a bunch in Denali (one was probably the recently described S. yuconicus), one S from Algutin Pass, and a few around Nome, plus 5-6 crossing roads in different places.

  • 29 August 2010
    Jon Hall

    John, these notes look good to me. Really helpful to have information like this. Your information on Nevada was spot on too – Matt Miller and I found Palmers and Panamint Chipmunks easily at the sites you described. God knows how many hours or days we would have wasted otherwise! I also saw a Kangaroo Rat along the road you recommended at Vermillion Cliffs north of the Grand Canyon. But I didn’t get a long look at it. Do you know if Chisel-toothed is the only species there?

    Jon

    • 30 August 2010
      jj2b

      Jon

      Glad you guys got the chipmunks. Unfortunately, Ord’s K-rat is also there. I saw one a few miles east of that BLM road that was tan colored and had a short tailed look (for a K-rat) My Chisel-toothed was olive/gray with a dark mask and had a long and thin tailed appearance, and ran in to a patch of saltbush, which they are associated with. Kays and Wilson say “Metallic gray pelage, darker tail stripes, and a more prominent face mask distinguish it from Ord’s”, and gives tail lengths of 100-163 mm for Ord’s and 135-175 mm for Chisel-toothed. Those are the only two there, hope you saw enough to tell.

      Look forward to hearing about the rest of your trip, esp. that **** ferret 🙂

      John

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