Friday, April 21, 2017

Other Colorado Wildlife

Of course, we saw more birds than Grouse and Ptarmigan. In fact, I added 11 life birds on the trip. Todd got 4 which is good for him. We found iconic western species including 100+ Western Meadowlarks singing their R2D2 songs.

Western Meadowlark
And beautiful Stellar's Jays in the mountains.

Stellar's Jay
We found this Yellow-headed Blackbird in the marsh.

Yellow-headed Blackbird
And this little Rock Wren.

Rock Wren
On the lake, we saw 100+ American White Pelicans. They are pretty easy to spot but not usually close enough for a photo like this.

American White Pelican
Here is one of the life birds for me. McCown's Longspur which is a tiny sparrow-like bird that runs around in the grass. Very difficult to spot unless it runs across the dirt road like this one did.

McCown's Longspur
It is always a joy to find Rough-legged Hawks. This one perched on a fence post.

Roughie
Of course, there were other critters too. We were surprised to spot this Red Fox wandering along the side of the mountain road. Look at the long fur - alot different than the foxes in our yard.

Red Fox

Furry Fox
It is the big game that was really cool. Like these Bighorn Sheep.

Bighorn Sheep

Chewing on Grass
And the Pronghorn too. These were the animals that I really wanted to see. We saw a few that were very far away or close but then bolted when they saw us (Pronghorn are the fastest animal in North America) but these 2 didn't seem to mind our cameras snapping photos.

Pronghorn

Pronghorn


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Superb!!! HH