The day we saw the bighorn sheep, we also saw some other fun animals. Otters running and sliding on the ice and ducking in and out of the frigid water with their friends, the swans. Bald Eagles maybe digesting or waiting for their next meal to come along. Clark’s Nutcrackers foraging for their pine seed caches. More swans and a group of partridges near the road as the sun finally started to show up.
I volunteer at a MAPS (Monitoring Avian Productivity and Survivorship) station where we capture and band birds, collect data and let them go and hope to see them in future years. There is one Swainson’s Thrush that we have seen six years in a row! That means he has made five round trips to Central America and back! How cool is that? Anyway, last week was our last banding session for the summer and we had surprise visitors to one of the ponds on the property – three river otters! It looked like maybe a mama and two youngsters. They watched us as we walked by over and over again and they fished for the big-lipped suckers that live in the pond and they napped on a log. At one point they crossed over our trail and into the adjacent pond on a swim-about before returning to their log. After that, we had to be careful to avoid stepping in otter poop! We all had chances to photograph them with our cell phones and cameras and the otters did not seem bothered by our presence. What a day!
My Everyday Photos 