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Wood Rat
Related Category: Vertebrate Zoology
see pack rat.
More on Wood Rat ...
Wood rats are commonly called Pack Rats or Trade Rats because they collect various objects and bits of material to deposit in, or use in the construction of, their nests.
Wood rats, mice, voles, rabbits, gophers, bats, birds, reptiles and arthropods
Population
In the U.S., there are an estimated 2,106 Mexican spotted owls. Numbers in Mexico are also dangerously low.
The wood rats of Colorado: distribution and ecology. In: Hall, E. Raymond; Fitch, Henry S.; Tordoff, Harrison B., eds. University of Kansas publications. Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas, Museum of Natural History. 10(6): 213-552. [23865] 50.
Revision of the wood rats of the genus Neotoma. North American Fauna, 31:1-124. Goldman, E. A. 1937. The wolves of North America. J. Mamm., 18:37-45. Goldman, E. A. 1944. Classification of wolves. Part II in Young, S. P., and E. A. Goldman.
LIFE HISTORY AND ECOLOGY: Eastern wood rats are primarily nocturnal species though they may occasionally be abroad on overcast days.
Additional nest sites include platform nests (mostly constructed by other raptors, wood rats, or squirrels), clusters of mistletoe, and cavities or potholes in cliff or cliff ledges.
Diet: It is rare but not impossible to see wood rats out in the day, although their usual time to forage and collect nest material is at dusk and during the night. They eat a variety of foods depending on their habitat.
Their diet includes wood rats, gophers, rabbits, squirrels, lizards, insects and other birds. They often hunt in pairs or small groups. They are ferocious, but cooperative, hunters.
The bird often forages on ground squirrels, wood rats, and other rodents in its thorn-forest habitat, but it has also been known to take snakes and birds up to night-heron and duck size and is thought by some to feed on carrion from time to time.
Among the mammals, wood rats, ground squirrels, mice, and rabbits supply the bulk of the diet. Although deer occasionally are killed and eaten, most of the deer meat found in Bobcat stomachs has been carrion.
The still larger rat trap is stocked in most hardware stores and is suitable for taking animals the size of wood rats and small ground squirrels. Steel traps in sizes 0 to 4 are used in many areas to secure other animals.
Diet: The Spotted Owl's diet consists of small mammals like flying squirrels, wood rats, mice, voles and also some birds, reptiles, amphibians, and insects. This owl hunts mainly at night by swooping down from a higher perch.
Topping, M., J. Millar, J. Goddard. 1999. The effects of moonlight on nocturnal activity in bushy-tailed wood rats (Neotoma cinerea). Canadian Journal of Zoology, 77(3): 480-485.
Prey consists mostly of small rodents, reptiles, insects, and an occasional small bird hence the common name of "Sparrowhawk. American Kestrels have been photographed killing prey as large as a wood rat!
HUNTING METHOD: ...
Found in a wide variety of open, sunny habitats, including woodlands, grasslands, scrub, chapparal, forests, along waterways, suburban dwellings. Often found on fences, woodpiles, piles of rocks and rocky outcrops, dead and downed trees, wood rat ...
However, food habit studies have shown Bobcats subsist on a diet of rabbits, ground squirrels, mice, pocket gophers and wood rats. Quail have been found in bobcat stomachs, but predation by bobcats does not harm healthy game populations.
 See also: Mice, Squirrel, Rabbit, Rat, Ground Squirrel
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