We saw our first pika of the season. I didn’t expect to do so. We were on a bouldery debris slope at about 4,700 feet in elevation—ideal pika habitat—but the rocks were rimmed in snow, which had fallen the previous night. And, it was neither warm nor sunny; I was warm only because I had been hiking uphill for the past two plus miles. Yet, there atop a boulder, perched in the mighty glory of full pikatude, was one of the handsome little lagomorphs.

The pika seemed to be watching us but made neither noise nor movement. Apparently, we were not of much interest. One aspect of pikas I like, in contrast to chipmunks and ground squirrels, who often beg for and steal food, is that the more dignified pikas simply vanish like liquid into their lithologic homes when disturbed by people. They know we are there but don’t change their ways because of us and for that I respect them and their ability to disdain us and remain true to their nature.

Unlike some of their much much larger fellow mountain dwellers (such as bears), pikas do not hibernate; they simply hunker down in their homes. To accomplish this winter-defying feat, pikas are planners, or what biologist Denise Dearing calls “profligate hayers.” They spend much of the summer collecting plants to store deep in their rocky homes, making as many as thirteen haying trips per hour.1 She also found that individual pikas ventured forth an average of thirteen thousand times in the summer in search of suitable vegetation for their petripads.

Such hay piles, or caches, Dearing found, contained 350 days of food. She also determined that even if 25 percent was lost to decomposition and 25 percent included nonedible items, a pika’s storage cache still contained enough for the majority of their winter diet. Dearing further observed that pikas harvest two types of plants: ones to be eaten immediately and ones to be stored. The latter contain more phenols, chemicals that aid in preservation, which lead to more nutrients later in the winter, when they’re most needed.

In another study of pika hay piles, researchers described pikas as allogenic engineers because of these accumulations of plant matter.2 To an ecologist, an allogenic engineer is a species that changes the environment by transforming living or nonliving materials from one physical state to another; classic examples include beavers and woodpeckers. In contrast autogenic engineers change the environment via their own physical structures; think corals and trees.

Regarding our higher alpine engineers, ecologists have observed that these hay piles increase soil nutrients, particularly nitrogen, which could contribute to the overall fitness of subalpine and alpine plants. Hay piles also accelerate soil development and, when the nutrients leach into lakes, the added productivity can help drive a more complex food web that benefits amphibians, fish, and insects. Way to go, little farmer.

As the mountain snow melts out and more people head up to our lovely Cascades, I suspect that more and more of us will see these amazing little animals. About the size of a fist, tailless, and fetchingly tawny, with cute-as-can-be white-margined ears, pikas animate boulder fields with their swift movements and distinct eeenk calls. They are arguably one of the Cascades’ most beloved, most frequently studied, and most well adapted animals. Plus, they are darned enchanting, so I wish you many fine encounters with them.

Word of the week - Pika - In 1769, German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas published the first scientific description of pikas. He based it on an expedition to Siberia in 1768, when he learned of the Mongolian vernacular—ochodona or ogotona—for the what he named Lepus alpinus.

How Pallas got the name pika is a bit more complicated. When I asked an historical linguist who specializes in Central and Northeast Asia languages (in particular the language spoken by the Evenki people), he told me that Pallas probably heard pika through someone translating it from Russian, which has two animals called pishchukha (пищуха): pikas (unclear which one as there are at least three species in this region: Ochotona pallas, O. turuchanensis, and O. hyperborea) and the Eurasian Treecreeper (Certhia familiaris). The former is found under the name čipa in the dictionaries, while the latter is attested as pikačaan. “My conclusion is that Pallas or his collaborators most likely asked an Evenki person for the translation of pishchukha and received the name of the bird (pikačaan) rather than the rodent (čipa) as a reply,” said the linguist. He added that “in transcriptions of Evenki, the letter i is commonly used to write the ee sound, so peeka should be what Pallas heard.”

If you want to know more about pikas, they pop up regularly in word and image in my next boo In the Range of Fire and Ice. You just have to wait until September, when the book hits bookstores.

By the way, here’s one of the pikas in the book. She’s drawn by Melissa McFeeters, who was also the designer of In the Range of Fire and Ice. And, in case you wondered the pika’s name is Poppy.

Footnotes:

* M. Denise Dearing, “The Function of Haypiles of Pikas (Ochotona princeps),” Journal of Mammalogy 78 (4), 1997, 1156-1163.

* Ken Aho et al, “Pikas as Allogenic Engineers in an Alpine Ecosystem,” Oecologia 114, 1998, 405-409.

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