On golden pond
Curious, for a brief second
A sight for sore eyes
Just for the record
Goblet with matching insect
At the end of the path
Old age beauty
A mighty beast
A youngster having fun
Design by Mother Nature
Mountain Bluebird juvenile
Young Yellow-bellied Marmot
Lazy, lazy Hippo
Eye-catching Hibiscus
I'm really quite shy
Reflections in a church window
At the end of a great day
Prairie sentinels
Little Church, Drumheller
Similar to a Dandelion
The Hoodoo Trail, near Drumheller
Added character and detail
Chipmunk with Foxtail
Eye-catching Fireweed
Cedar Waxwing with mountain bokeh
Fall colours
Forgetmenot Pond - one of my favourite places
Beautiful Leafhoppers - Cuerna alpina
The mountains at sunrise
Great dexterity
Supper time for a hungry young Beaver
Listening
Delicate
A country road in fall colours
Burrowing Owl
Splish, splash, I was taking a bath
Filling up on berries before winter
Watching and waiting
Looking a lot like fall
Where I was, yesterday
McDougall Church on a sunny day
Fall colours of Common Tansy
Owl butterfly
View over the Waterton Valley
Dusky Grouse
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A moment to ponder


Just over a month ago, on 19 August 2014, I was lucky enough to have the chance to try and photograph a couple of these absolutely adorable little creatures : ) After a while, I was beginning to despair of ever getting any decent shots at all. These tiny Pikas, also known as Rock Rabbits, hardly ever remain still and they are extremely fast! Imagine a mountain hillside covered in sharp, jagged rocks of all sizes and then try to picture how difficult it is to find in the viewfinder the single rock on which one of these Pikas might happen to be sitting for a second or two, lol! By the time you find the rock, the Pika is long gone. They rely on existing spaces between the rocks for their homes - they don't dig a burrow, though they can dig to make their home bigger. Because the Pikas are a similar colour to many of the surrounding rocks, it is so difficult to see them - unless you happen to catch sight of some movement or you see a bunch of greenery moving at top speed over the rocky mountain side. At this time of year, they are so busy collecting plants and leaves to store in their little cave for the winter.
As time passed, I managed to take quite a lot of photos, though many will need to eventually be deleted. Hope you don't get tired of seeing these little guys, but they are just so very cute. They are about 15 to 23 centimetres (5.9 to 9.1 in) in body length, so really are pretty small. And, no, I didn't put one in my pocket to bring home with me!
"The American Pika is a generalist herbivore. It eats a large variety of green plants, including different kinds of grasses, sedges, thistles and fireweed. Although pikas can meet their water demands from the vegetation they eat, they do drink water if it is available in their environment. Pikas have two different ways of foraging: they directly consume food (feeding) or they cache food in haypiles to use for a food source in the winter (haying). The pika feeds throughout the year while haying is limited to the summer months. Since they do not hibernate, pikas have greater energy demands than other montane mammals. In addition, they also make 13 trips per hour to collect vegetation when haying, up to a little over 100 trips per day." From Wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_pika
Link to a video that someone has posted on YouTube, to see and hear these little Rock Rabbits:
youtu.be/W4U9IxhQSTc
As time passed, I managed to take quite a lot of photos, though many will need to eventually be deleted. Hope you don't get tired of seeing these little guys, but they are just so very cute. They are about 15 to 23 centimetres (5.9 to 9.1 in) in body length, so really are pretty small. And, no, I didn't put one in my pocket to bring home with me!
"The American Pika is a generalist herbivore. It eats a large variety of green plants, including different kinds of grasses, sedges, thistles and fireweed. Although pikas can meet their water demands from the vegetation they eat, they do drink water if it is available in their environment. Pikas have two different ways of foraging: they directly consume food (feeding) or they cache food in haypiles to use for a food source in the winter (haying). The pika feeds throughout the year while haying is limited to the summer months. Since they do not hibernate, pikas have greater energy demands than other montane mammals. In addition, they also make 13 trips per hour to collect vegetation when haying, up to a little over 100 trips per day." From Wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_pika
Link to a video that someone has posted on YouTube, to see and hear these little Rock Rabbits:
youtu.be/W4U9IxhQSTc
, novogorodec have particularly liked this photo
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