Tuesday 24 October 2017

Alpine Marmot

One of the animals I wanted to see on our recent trip to Switzerland was the Alpine Marmot, or just Marmot as I called them at the time.

I was able to get some good information from our Air BandB host, and as a result we got some pretty good views of them.

The Alpine Marmot (Marmota marmota) is a ground squirrel, in the same genus the American Groundhog.  We heard the Alpine Marmot before we saw them as they communicate with short, sharp whistles that seem to travel a long way in the alpine air.  These pictures were taken on the mountains near Grindelwald, when we were doing a walk from the First (pronounced to sound like 'fear', rather the the position in a race!) cable car station.   It was a truly wonderful part of the world - and there will be picture to follow!







You can find more pictures from around the world here at Our World Tuesday.

18 comments:

  1. Hari OM
    ....can't help it... awwwwwwwwwww, cutie pie!!! Sorry. It overwhelmed me. &*> YAM xx

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  2. I once saw one in Austria many years ago but no photo. Delighted to see your photos.

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  3. They are bigger than I thought they'd be. Thank you for sharing!a

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  4. It's great that you wanted to see them and were able to make that wish come true. How often have you searched for a bird in vain? Groundhog (or Woodchuck) is quite common here, but they are already hibernating and we won't see them again until next spring.

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  5. Two Marmots ~ how wonderful! love that photo ~ others are great too ~ especially the one where it seems he senses you are there ~ ^_^

    A ShutterBug Explores aka (A Creative Harbor)

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  6. What an adorable creature! Great shots.

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  7. Wonderful! Remibds me of the thrill when I first saw prairie dogs.

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  8. Lovely to see this animal. I saw a similar animal on rocks in MAlawi and when i asked what it was they said it was a rock rabbit.

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  9. Great photos!
    Did you know that their cousins, the American Groundhogs, are sometimes called Whistle-pigs because of their high-pitched whistling to each other?
    I hope you are having a wonderful week!

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  10. cutie pies

    in the American West, Southwest, they were hated for their holes...a deathtrap for a horse in a gallop. So they were almost hunted to extinction.

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  11. They are gorgeous, they look a bit like the Rock hyrax found in South Africa but it seems they are not related. Great photos. Cheers Diane

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  12. That marmot has plenty of relatives where I'm now living, in southeastern Alberta. Ours are properly called Richardson's Ground Squirrel, but everyone here calls them gophers. Our little dog Bonnie, a small hunting-terrier mix, actually screams when she sees one on her long walks with my husband. She is very good, though, and has learned to ignore them (so difficult for her because of her mixed-terrier lineage) when she is walking with me. (She is my husband's walking buddy, but she has appointed herself my keeper.) I'm glad she can't see your photos!
    Kay
    An Unfittie's Guide to Adventurous Travel

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  13. Wonderful photos! We saw marmots when we went to Colorado a few years back...they were very unafraid of our presence. There are marmots here in a field that are VERY skittish....no photos yet, mainly because there's no place to park the car to get the shots, but the one time I tried, one that was very far across the field made a mad dash for his hidey hole! :-)

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  14. Nice creature!!! Wonderful series of images .. Very well done .. greetings ..

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  15. Nice photos Stewart! What a cutie this little guy is.

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