Colorado wildlife: A favorite critter - the American Pika

 

I have written and presented photos of one of my favorite animals, the American Pika, here in the blog several times during the last few years. If you type ‘pika’ into the search field in the left side bar you can see the older photos and blog posts about this cute and highly interesting critter.

We saw them again this year during a hiking tour in the Maroon Bells- Snowmass Wilderness in the Rocky Mountains. If you cross a boulder-covered hillside above an altitude of 8,000 feet you may have a good chance to hear and eventually see them. The pikas were busy gathering grass and other plants as food for the upcoming winter. I guess they know that there is more than just work in life and sometimes they stop for a few minutes and take a sun bath or just watch what’s going on in their rocky neighborhood.

I have quite a few images of the American Pika on my hard drive already but still missed “the” shot that tells the story about their preparation for the winter. It is not so difficult to make the click while the pika takes a break and looks down from a rock, but if they have the mouth full of plants and grass they move darn fast between the boulders. Because of the rocks it is not so easy to follow them with the lens and track focus. Peak of action, the short stops the pika makes sometime on its way to the den was again the key for success.

I got the shot I went after this time but I know there is still room for improvement. Sharpness is not 100 percent nailed and the photo is slightly cropped. I was closer with the Nikon D300s / Sigma 150, f2.8 combo for the second image and it is definitely a tad sharper. The question is always, which photo tells the better story? For me it’s the first one despite the little technical flaws…

2012 – Looking back, part 10

 

I have posted several times this fall about our visit in the Rocky Mountains. I still have images that haven't been shown in either of my galleries. Can't resist to show you the American Pika again today because I just watched a documentary about the effects the warming of the earth has on this little critter. It is not easy to get really close to the pika but this photo shows their natural habitat, the boulder-covered hillsides above 8,000 feet altitude.

The other animal is a Golden-mantled Ground Squirrel. It was on the watch, not far from the trail on a grassy hillside. It almost seemed to pose for us... ;-)

The background in the pika picture has natural lens blur that separates the animal from the background nicely. Not as good as with a fast and much more expensive f/2.8 or f/4 lens, but the Sigma 50-500 f/4-6.3 still delivers a decent result here. The grassy background in the squirrel picture was much more distracting and so I used a blur filter in Photoshop to improve the result in the upper part of the photo. Still not perfect but I believe it is a feasible solution to work around the limitations of this lens.

Nature clicks #128 - American Pika

 

Back to nature related photography today. Joan and I spent quite some time to look out for one of our favorite animals, the American Pica, during our trip to the Rocky Mountains. Knowing a little bit about their habitat, steep boulder-covered hillsides at an altitude above 8,000 feet, helps to find them. This photo was made on the slope of 14,264 feet high Mount Evans. I had this pika here already in my viewfinder when a hawk suddenly soared over the rocks and the pika disappeared between the boulders with cyberspeed. It took ten minutes before it showed up again and continued sunbathing. But maybe it was just on the watch from this well exposed rock hanging over a very deep valley. I sure enjoyed watching these critters and was very happy to make some good clicks.

Nature clicks #124 - American Pika

 

A few day ago I mentioned that I was actually waiting for another critter while shooting some pictures of the Yellow-bellied Marmot. So here it is. The American Pika is one of my favorite animals. They live on steep, boulder-covered hillsides at elevations between 8,000 and 13,500 feet (2400m - 4100m). The pika is one of the animals that has no way to go if the effects of global warming continue. Their numbers are already on a systematic decline in many mountain ranges of the American West. If you like to read about why this is a matter of fact click HERE for a link to an article on the website of the National Wildlife Federation that explains it very good or click HERE for a video on the National Geographic website.

First I saw them a couple years ago in the Mount Rainier area in Washington and fell immediately in love with this animal. My pictures of this first encounter , hmmm, just sucked, and so this time the American Pika was at the top of my shooting list for our trip to the Rocky Mountain National Park. They were in process to harvest grass, sedges, and thistles for the winter, which they carry in their mouth, and they can move very fast between the rocks, making it a big challenge to capture a sharp image. Before you can see them you may hear their very vocal call that the pikas use to communicate and to warn each other. It helps to find them between the rocks and boulders on a mountain slope.

This photo was actually made along a relative busy trail. We went there again another day but didn't see a single pika. Wild animals have their own agenda and we are the intruders in their world. Patience and a careful approach is the only fair way to get the shot. It wasn't my last picture of a pika during this trip, but this is reserved for another post...