ANIMAL HABITS
By Charles Landes, Nature Guide

Man is not the only animal with fixed habits. Most of the animals live within a fairly fixed domain within which they have one or more homes. For three years I have climbed Eagle Peak and always at about the same point on the trail I have been greeted by the warning whistle of a marmot.

I know where to look for him, on a projecting rock of a high crag he maintains a look out and there I never fail to find him especially if the day be sunny. The little brown bear called "Jimmie," comes to the kitchen of the government camp at Longmire quite regularly for food. Always he comes out of the woods at the same spot and walks through the camp grounds following a path that takes him between two tents only about twenty feet apart. Here he often finds his pathway blocked by children of the community or campers but he calmly selects another course and on his next trip or his return goes back over the old path between the tents.

In Van Trump Park is a good sized band of white mountain goat. These goats for years have inhabited the same region and maintained the same look outs. Knowing where these lookouts are and how to approach them one can readily see these goats. They make their retreat to safety over about the same route along the high ridges reaching the Cushman Crest. On cold, rainy, cloudy days they retreat to the high cliffs and ridges.

There are some sedentary animals but most of the animals have habits and habitats that are fairly fixed and within which they are better able to maintain themselves, because of the advantage which familiarity with food possibilities and safety from enelies has given them.