CONY 219 



Hence he waits in a suitable locality and listens intently until one of them 

 utters its note and then seeks out and scrutinizes the small area whence the 

 sound comes until its maker is discerned. This call is a moderately loud 

 two or three-syllabled utterance, and it has a nasal intonation. The quality 

 of the note sug:gests the clinking together of two flakes of granite. It has 

 been variously rendered by our field observers. One writes it yinJ{, yink; 

 another, ke-ack, ke-ack, or ke-ack, ke-ack, ke-ick-y; and another e-chack/, 

 e-chack' , cliee-ick' , cliee-ick' , ckee-ick'-y. Sometimes the call is uttered but 

 once; again it may be repeated for ten or fifteen seconds, at first rapidly, 

 then more slowly, as if the cony's breath were being gradually exhausted. 

 The animal accompanies its calls with certain movements which seem 

 essential to their production. The whole body is jerked violently forward, 

 as if considerable exertion were necessary to expel the air from the lungs, 

 and at the same time the ears are twitched upward, so that in face view 

 their outlines suddenly catch the observer's eye. 



For several months of each year snow covers everything within the 

 range of the Yosemite Cony. The various species of animals which dwell 

 there meet the resulting food scarcity in a number of different ways. Most 

 of the birds emigrate, the deer and coyote descend to lower altitudes, the 

 marmot hibernates, the gopher constructs tunnels through the snow so as 

 to reach the vegetation enveloped in the snow mantle, and the white-tailed 

 jack rabbit turns white and develops big 'snow-shoes' on its feet so that 

 it can forage upon the plants that stick above the surface of the snow. 

 The cony has still another method of meeting the situation. 



During the late summer and early autumn the Yosemite Cony is busy 

 at all hours of the day gathering materials to serve as food while it is 

 imprisoned among the rocks beneath the snow. It cuts and stores away 

 grasses and sedges and other plants which grow in the vicinity of its home. 

 These are carried into the rock slides and stored in a dry, well-drained, 

 shady yet airy place, sheltered above from snow and rain, and free from 

 the danger of running water below— an ideal hay barn from the stand- 

 point of a farmer. This mode of treatment, as it happens, preserves 

 unfaded the natural colors of the plants, whose fragrance is that of well- 

 cured hay free from mold. One such 'hay-pile' seen by the senior author 

 on Warren Peak, Mono County, September 26, 1915, was situated under 

 a huge flat rock and was composed of about a bushel of material. Samples 

 from a pile examined at 8300 feet altitude on McClure Fork of Merced 

 River, August 26, 1915, included twigs and needles of lodgepole pine, sprigs 

 of "ocean spray" (Holodiscus discolor diimosa), two or more alpine 

 species of sedge (Carex), with their characteristically rough stems of 

 triangular cross-section, a grass (Poa), and an epilobium. The nearest 

 sedge was twenty-five feet downhill in a wet place, while the nearest bush 



