New Records and Some Observations on Connecticut Mammals

Abstract

While collecting mammals in Connecticut during the summers of 1928 and 1930, I made several new records for this State. So far as I know, prior to 1928, Synaptomys cooperi, Ncpteozapus insignis, Sylvilagus mallurus, Sorex palustris, Sore» fumeus and Parascalops breweri had not been recorded from here.I found Synaptomys cooperi inhabiting cool wet pockets in the hills in Macedonia State Park near Kent, west-central Litchfield County, at an elevation of 1,000 feet. They seemed restricted to the shade of a thick forest growth where the floor was more or less overgrown with ferns, sphagnum and other mosses, and where the branches of the trees interlaced overhead, allowing only a very limited amount of sunlight to penetrate through to the ground.Definite runways were not visible on the surface, though subterranean passages through the moss were not uncommon. The presence of Synaptomys, however, was at once indicated by cuttings of saw-grass, chopped in lengths of about one and one half inches, heaped up under the edges of large tussocks of grass. Other full length grasses were cut off at the' base and dragged under cover. The small piles of cuttings were in various stages of decay. Some were quite fresh, and judging from the uniform condition of the individual piles, I should say that each was a single night's work and that here at least Synaptomys did not by guest on June 7, 2016 http://jmammal.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from

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