A couple weeks ago our tour followed the alarm barks of a couple very agitated coyotes to find an ever-elusive family of lions. Always a treat to catch these ghosts in the open!
Opportunistic Omnivores.
A fancy way of saying they’ll eat just about anything.
Ursus americanus (giganteus)
A fancy way of saying Black Bear (really, really big one)
This young wolf seemed confused as to what was spooking all the bison. From our angle it was a little more obvious!
Welcome to the last best herd little one! Don’t worry, there’ll be plenty of play pals joining you soon!
We had a fascinating sighting on a recent tour involving 2 badgers, 3 red-tailed hawks and 3 sand hill cranes.
It was the constant screeching of the red-tailed hawks (2 juveniles) that first drew our attention. They were diving down onto something in the tall grass. My first thought was they were learning to hunt, and harassing a marmot or ground squirrels. But then the first badger came into view, and it was clearly what they were buzzing.
After several minutes of this 3 sand-hill cranes landed very close by, and while the first badger was still being pursued by the hawks, the cranes had landed and surrounded another. In a full defensive display they flared their wings and hopped, full rattle calls blazing.
Suddenly there were 2 badgers being harassed by 2 different families of birds, neither species had I ever seen interact with a badger before.
In all the action, laughing and excitement I barely managed to capture a few short video clips. In this one you can see the badger digging, and emerging from the hole only to have one of the bothersome red-tails welcome him back to the surface.
You never quite know what you’ll see out there, especially if you’re paying attention!
Here’s a fun little clip of some drama in the Northern Range this morning on tour. Any guesses how it ended up??
