File:Controlling field rodents in California (1958) (20503921618).jpg

Title: Controlling field rodents in California
Identifier: controllingfield43458stor (find matches)
Year: 1958 (1950s)
Authors: Storer, Tracy I. (Tracy Irwin), 1889-1973; California Agricultural Experiment Station; University of California Agricultural Extension Service; University of California (System). Division of Agricultural Sciences
Subjects: Rodents; Mammals
Publisher: (Davis?) : Division of Agricultural Sciences, University of California
Contributing Library: University of California, Davis Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: University of California, Davis Libraries

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other plants, shredded like fine excelsior. Food is often stored beside the nest or in other enlarged chambers of the tunnel system. The burrow system of a pocket gopher may be many yards in length (fig. 11). Ordinarily each system is inhabited by a single gopher, although young may re- main in the tunnel occupied by the mother for a time after leaving the nest. The systems of adjacent gophers may be connected, but connecting tunnels and even portions of the workings of a single animal are often plugged firmly with earth. When a gopher is trapped out of a tunnel system another animal may later move in and occupy that system. Moles or mice occasionally use gopher burrows. Pocket gophers are active throughout the year (even in mountain areas, where they work beneath the snow and put the sur- plus earth in tunnels in the snow), and fresh workings may be found in any month. Surface activity is less on dry areas during the hot summer months; at this season new mounds may be entirely lacking on unirrigated lands of the in- terior valleys. The animals are also less active during and just after a heavy rain. Breeding. On pasture lands and on uncultivated and unirrigated areas there is evidently a limited breeding season some time after the beginning of the rains, when green forage becomes avail-
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Fig. 11. Plan of the burrow system of a pocket gopher; excavated at Davis. (26

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