Specimens examined.—Total, 4, distributed as follows: San Bernardino County: Icehouse Canyon, 5500 ft., 2. Los Angeles County: San Antonio Canyon, 2800 ft., 2.
Neotoma fuscipes simplex True
Dusky-footed Woodrat
These rats were recorded from the yellow pine forests on Blue Ridge, at 8100 feet, down to the lower edge of the juniper belt, at 3800 feet. Their presence there as elsewhere was determined by the occurrence of adequate cover. On Blue Ridge they were taken in and near patches of snowbrush, currant, and choke cherry, and one was taken beneath a pile of logs where no nest was in evidence.
The thickets of choke cherry in hollows on Blue Ridge were favored house-building sites of woodrats. Among the tangle of branches large nests were built, and in September, 1951, the remains of choke cherry fruit and gnawings on the limbs of these plants indicated that woodrats were active throughout these extensive patches of brush.
In the pinyon-juniper association most of the large plants were used as nesting sites, but scrub oak, seemed to be especially preferred. Because it often grew in a twisted irregular form with the foliage nearly reaching the ground, the oak offered good shelter for the woodrat nests. In an acre of scrub oak and mountain mahogany brush one-half mile north of Jackson Lake, at 6100 feet, thirteen occupied woodrat nests were found. In the juniper belt, houses were of more irregular occurrence, and were always beneath juniper trees, usually beneath the largest and most widely spreading individuals.
Those specimens from Blue Ridge, on the crest of the San Gabriels, are intergrades between the coastal race macrotis and simplex of the desert slope. Although specimens vary widely in color, comparison with series of these two subspecies in the California Museum of Vertebrate Zoology indicates that all specimens from the desert slope of the San Gabriels are referable to the race simplex. Two specimens of this species from the granite talus above the base of Icehouse Canyon at 5500 feet on the Pacific slope, grade strongly toward simplex. Hooper (1938:231) mentions that specimens of this species taken along the San Gabriel and San Bernardino ranges may be intermediate between simplex and macrotis.
At the head of Grandview Canyon, tracks indicated that a coyote had foraged for about one half mile along the edge of a tract of dense oak and pinyon growth. It seemed as if the animal had been foraging for woodrats. A gray fox trapped near Graham Canyon, in the juniper belt, had in its stomach the remains of a freshly killed adult woodrat. The remains of an adult woodrat were found in the stomach of a rattlesnake (Crotalus viridis helleri) obtained on the desert slope of the mountains.
Specimens examined.—Total, 6, distributed as follows: Los Angeles County: 6 mi. E Valyermo, 5600 ft., 1; 1 mi. E Big Pines, 6600 ft., 2; 1 mi. S and 3 mi. W Big Pines, 6000 ft., 1; 1 mi. S and 2 mi. E Big Pines, 8100 ft., 2.
Microtus californicus sanctidiegi R. Kellogg