Had a very productive weekend for seeing wildlife. On Friday, I went in to a new goat spot, due to time limitations we couldn't make it all the way in, but we did still see 13 goats from the distance. On Saturday, I was able to glass 19 goats (in 3 herds) from the road, and then later see 2 more farther up a trail. I also saw a bear, 2 deer, and an elk. Today, I went back in to the goat spot and was able to make all the way in this time, I saw 22 goats, and 2 bear running down the road. Totals for the weekend are 56 goats, 5 deer, 3 bears, and an elk.
Here are the 13 goats from Friday. This was as close as we could get due to time limitations, but it was still fun to see them, even from a distance.
Unluckily, on Saturday, every animal we saw was too far away to get any pictures of, but I do have a fun little video of alecvg crossing a log in the woods.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhbwk7m2mpc[/youtube]
On Sunday, we saw some goats from the same spot, but we got a lot better pictures of some other goats. When we got back to the location where we saw 13 on Friday, we could see 9 goats. No good pictures though. On the hike in, we spotted this bird, I have no idea what kind of bird it is, does anyone know? It was at 4300 feet elevation.
We continued hiking up the ridge and actually hiked right along the ridge above this goat. We never saw the goat until a couple hours later when we were coming down on a parallel running ridge.
After hiking up the ridge, we were able to spot a nanny with a really small kid. The kid could literally run under the nanny's belly.
We also spotted a goat hidden away in a small alcove in the cliffs. It looked like a treacherous place to reach.
Soon, the goat moved out of its alcove and it turned out she had a young yearling along with her.
After trying to sneak up on them, we were able to play a little peek-a-boo with the yearling from about 40 yards. The fun thing about this picture is that I am clinging to a small spire on the end of a finger ridge. There is about a 100 foot deep little canyon between me and this little guy that is 40 yards away. A little spooky to say the least.
After sneaking a little further down the finger ridge, I realize that the yearling has a very large nanny with it. We estimate the nanny's horns to be in the 14-16 inch range. She was absolutely a giant!
The nanny didn't like us much and I was only able to get a couple of pictures before she took off running. After running to see where they would go we found that they had pushed the kid and nanny that we had seen earlier and they all came running by us at 40 yards.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zFdrdtWmYA[/youtube]
The big nanny and yearling split to the left and climbed a wall that I would have thought unclimbable until I saw them scale it. It was unbelievable.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTdXzUUnHQs[/youtube]
The young kid and nanny split to the right and also scaled a cliff I could not believe. Here is a video of them moving through the cliffs, right before they reach the crazy cliff.
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKRLxPuRloY[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6FaWi0l2_k[/youtube]
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rxk2lB2vkmU[/youtube]
Eventually, they ran in the direction of a small nursery herd we could see below us. The herd had 3 adults and 5 kids (making a total of 6 kids out of 22 seen today).
We continue along our way and almost stepped on a nest of ptarmigans. Here is the best photo I got of mom with one of her chicks, there were about 6 chicks running around and chirping.
We also came across this track in the snow. Elk I assume.
Finally we spotted a billy. Unluckily, he was about 800 yards away. But, considering the distance, it he must have had some pretty impressive mass to be able to identify him as a billy from that distance. He was all by his lonesome.
So overall, it was a pretty good weekend for animal spotting, especially the mountain goats. I am glad that of the goats I was able to identify, they were maintaining their kid ratio with roughly one kid for every 3.5 goats. Now lets just hope they can survive. If anyone can identify that red bird for me, I'd appreciate it.
