American Pika
Ochotona princeps · Mammals
American Pika
Snoqualmie, 4 October 2025
An American Pika on a talus slope in the Cascades near Snoqualmie in October, in the broken rock it lives in. Pikas are animals of cold, high boulder fields across the mountains of the West, and they never leave the rocks.
A relative of rabbits rather than a rodent, despite the round ears and the size. It is increasingly studied as a bellwether for mountain warming, because it has almost nowhere higher left to retreat to if a slope gets too warm. This one has spent the summer cutting and drying its own miniature haypiles, tucked down in the rocks for winter. It does not hibernate; it eats the hay.
Birds, insects, plants and other wildlife, mostly from Brooklyn, with some from further afield.
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