Background of the Mount Shasta Pika Project

Ochotona schisticeps. Cony; Pika. [Ochotona princeps Gray-headed Pika, American Pika, Rock Rabbit, Piping Hare, Whistling Hare]

The original photograph was taken by F. Stephens and the drawing is by W.J. Fenn.

Relatively rare and confined to small and widely separated colonies. During our circuit of the mountain, made near timberline the latter part of July, we saw what we took to be signs of conies among rocks east of Mud Creek Canyon, but finding no more believed we had been mistaken, until the evening of July 24, when we camped on some rivulets of snow water on the north side of Shastina. Here we found a small scattered colony reaching up in the slide rock from about 8,000 to nearly 10,000 feet, and a specimen was secured by Vernon Bailey. The next day we found signs in Cascade Gulch a mile or two northwest of Horse Camp. Later, when camped in the alpine hemlocks on the small west branches of Squaw Creek, we found a colony in the slide rock close by. Conies were afterwards found on both sides of Red Butte and on the east side of Gray Butte, and Osgood heard one near the head of Mud Creek Canyon. In all, 14 specimens were collected.

This species differs in habits and voice from those of the Rocky Mountains; it is less noisy and less often heard in the middle of the day, for which reason it is more apt to escape detection, and its common note, instead of the usual 'bleat,' is a loud shrill eh' eh,' or eh' eh' eh'. It seems to be most active in the late afternoon and on moonlight evenings, and its voice is heard at all hours of the night

On most mountains where conies live, their well-known accumulations of plants of various kinds, cut and piled on the rocks to dry, are conspicuous objects. But on Shasta, where I often saw the animals carrying freshly cut plants to their dens in the slide rock, I failed to find a single 'haystack.' In one place a few fresh stems of Polygonum newberryi, with is large broad leaves, were seen, and in another a large accumulation of old brown leaves of the same species mixed with a larger quantity of Phyllodoce empetriformis--apparently left over from the previous year. But the only real 'haystack' found on the mountain by any of the party was discovered on the east side of Gray Butte September 25 by Vernon bailey. It contained Epilobium spicatum, Holodiscus discolor, Monardella odoratissima, Hieracium horridum, Ceanothus velutinus, and two species of grass. The bulk of the material was Epilobium and Monardella.

On the west slope of Goose Nest Mountain, just east of Little Shasta Valley, Walter K. Fisher found conies common in an area of slide rock which extends in a practically unbroken stretch from the top to the botton of the mountain. I have not seen the specimens.

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