Hemet California in early winter

I suspect something other than full moon or cold is to blame for the lack of kangaroo rat sightings. My hypothesis is because vegetation (so seeds/grains, the primary food source for k-rats) was so prolific this year, kangaroo rats finished much of their foraging by mid-summer and have reduced their activity to near zero this late in the year. If there isn’t much to gain in food by leaving their burrows and a lot to lose (predation risk), it makes sense that activity of the k-rats would be low.

On Nov 29, I spent 2 hours spotlighting in the Panoche and Vallecitos Valleys is San Benito County, an area where I normally have no problem finding 20+ kangaroo rats of multiple species, year-round. I saw ZERO. By way of reference, I saw 200+ k-rats of 3 species in this same area in late May and Jon Hall saw 20+ in October. Temperature was in the low 50s so not too cold, it was a quarter moon, and the wind wasn’t very strong either, so all the factors we usually blame on low mammal sightings were not issues. I suspect my previous sightings in late Nov-Dec of k-rats in Panoche were likely phenomena related to drought years, when vegetation was more sparse and thus required k-rats to forage more frequently, year-round.