I recently spent a fair bit of time hanging out and photographing a colony of Pikas. They are busy this time of year as they work to collect and store vegetation in caches under the rocks for the long, cold winter. Pikas are cute little mammals that live high in the San Juans on talus slopes, with dens beneath the rocks. They don’t have tails and are part of the rabbit/hare family. They communicate by frequent vocalizations and are often detected by their shrill nasal “eehp!” call. An example of their call can be heard in the video below. They can be difficult to spot, as they blend remarkably well into their rocky surroundings. They are active year-round and often seen during the summer months when they are feeding and gathering stores for the winter. The Pikas in the photos and video below were busy early in the morning collecting vegetation to store, some of them rather ambitious in the size of pieces that they chose to carry or drag across the rocks to their cache.