Wednesday, September 13th, 2017

September 13th, 2017
In a greasewood vegetation community, near Minersville, UT.
Take SR-130 (Minersville Hwy) until the junction with SR-21. Go for about .5 mile and turn south (left) onto Thermo road. Drive about 15 miles until you reach a power line road that heads directly south. Drive for about 1.5 miles until you reach a yellow cattle guard and a fence. Take the 2 track road that heads west along the fence line. 1/2 mile down is one of the many places Chisel-toothed Kangaroo Rats live.
The vegetation at this particular site was mostly greasewood and either fourwing or shadscale saltbush. I didn't pay close enough attention to which one it was. There was probably about 20-30% vegetation cover. There was no slope to this site. It was a wide open greasewood flat.
I was with Rylan Orton, Dustin Schaible, and Conner England.
We have been observing these mammals for the past 3 weeks. (Originally we have been after trapping Dark Kangaroo Mice, but we have yet to trap one.) This particular one we observed for about 7 minutes taking measurements and sex identification.
We arrived at this site around 7:05am and left about 9:25am.
On the Beaufort scale the wind was a 1. There wasn't much of a breeze going on. Which is surprising because every other day it has slightly breezy and smelly because of the pig farm. Get a wiff of that breeze and you want to die. At the start of our observation, it was 57 degrees Fahrenheit with no cloud cover.
The elevation was 5,182 ft.
This particular day we trapped 10 kangaroo rats (I can't remember how many males and females, but we had both), 3 deer mice (all males, if I remember correctly), 1 grasshopper mouse (male), and 1 unknown mouse (male).
This was a fun day trapping small mammals. I have really enjoyed this part of my job. I'm sad because I will no longer be able to go out and process them in the morning because of school. Kangaroo rats are one of the cutest rodents ever. Being able to handle them is such a fun experience. I was lucky enough to not be bitten by anything we trapped!

Publicado el 14 de septiembre de 2017 a las 02:51 AM por