Photography
 
This adult American pika, with peppery brown fur, and round ears, was observing her territory, before  heading out to collect plant material.  
 
This American pika lives in a boulder-covered hillside in Montana, at an elevations of 9,100 feet.  
 
The American pika is a plant eater. It eats and collects a wide variety of plants, including grasses, raspberry plants, moss, lichen, sedges, thistles and fireweed.  It will eat some food on the spot and it will carry food back to its home and store the plants in a pile, "haypile" or "haystack."