SOD POODLES

This is the Black-tailed Prairie Dog (Cynomys ludovicianus); a.k.a. Sod Poodle.
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These critters live in vast colonies sometimes covering hundreds of acres worth of interconnecting tunnels. This is what you saw in yesterday's Blip. Their burrows were the bane of cowboys in the 1800s. Many a horse busted a leg running into one of those holes. That was akin to having your car blow up in the middle of the Bad Lands...the riders were stranded without transportation.
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The photo of the colony shows perhaps 1/10th of the size of it and it is found on both sides of the roadway where I stopped to take this photo.
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Most of these rodents quickly went underground when I stopped the car and got out to photograph them. But I knelt down and shot, low and surreptitiously, from the rear of the car.
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I have a hundred or more shots of individuals who didn't seem to mind if I was not moving. The wide open space of the colony provides excellent view of predators. Coyotes are number one in that department but golden eagles also hunt from above. Let's not forget rattlesnakes...and they can go right down the burrows.
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Normally this place would be covered in grass but the immense size of this colony has seen it all eaten...even the rootstock. It's beyond me what they manage to feed on but there are hundreds of them so they are obviously getting it done.
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Best in Large.  BTW...the Nikon D500 is a DX body with a 1.5x crop factor; so the equivalent focal length is 750mm.