Alaska marmot, Marmota broweri, Utukok uplands, National Petroleum Reserve Alaska, Arctic, Alaska. Canon 1Ds Mark III, 500mm f/4L IS w/2x converter (1000mm)
On a summer photo trip in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, I photographed this marmot basking in the midnight sun at 1:00am. I was aware of a different species of marmot in the north but not sure about this one and in my haste to get it online with the rest of the images from that shoot, just named it the Hoary marmot, Marmota caligata. But thanks to Aren Gunderson, a researcher with the University of Alaska Museum of the North, for pointing out the clarification that this marmot is the somewhat rarely photographed Alaska marmot, not the Hoary marmot. Aren, along with a few other biologists, has written an article on the distribution of the Alaska marmot published in the Journal of Mammology (Vol. 90, No. 4). He notes that Hoary marmots are not found north of the Yukon river. I observed this marmot on a number of hikes but only once had the chance to photograph it. They seem much more wary than the Hoary marmots I often encounter further south in Alaska. For this reason, I used a focal length of 1000mm to get some reach without scaring the marmot back into the protected boulder rubble.
