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Well known to hikers because of their shrill warning whistles (and hence sometimes called 'whistle pigs'), marmots are among the largest rodents in North America and Eurasia. Yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris) are found in much of the mountainous western US. In some areas they live in forests but are more typically found in mountain meadows or high above timberline, where they hibernate for as much as nine months of the year. These wary but curious marmots were watching me from alpine rockpiles just east of Yosemite National Park, California (at about 3,300 m), and near the Barcroft Laboratory in the White Mountains of eastern California, at about 3,600 m (more than 12,000 feet). The peak in the background of the photos immediately below is White Mountain Peak (4,346 m), the third highest point in California; this marmot was exceptionally confiding, letting me get within a few meters and use a short zoom lens instead of a long telephoto. If it isn't windy, marmots love to bask in the sun, as a couple of these images show. |
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