Sunday, July 26, 2009

Elkswhere



On yesterday's hike we till didn't see the herd of 200 elk that were hanging around the last couple of months. But we saw four young and dark coyotes running through an elk grove.

I told my mother this.

"We saw four coyotes today, Mom."

a few "What? saw what?"s...

hen she said, "Were they animals or automobiles?"

pause..

Then I realized she meant Toyotas! We both laughed.



As we were heading back down the hill we heard a raucous bird call. I thought it was probably a magpie or some kind of jay, but looking up I saw it was a golden eagle. It was yelling at us. I think we'd interrupted its lunch a few minutes before, because we'd seen a half chewed squirrel just back on the trail.

The bird dropped a beautiful feather as it flew away, which I brought home, alone with one antler. In my bird book the feather was from an immature Golden Eagle.

6 comments:

Namowal (Jennifer Bourne) said...

That's cool that you saw a golden eagle. I've never seen an eagle outside of a zoo (and the zoo eagle looked very bored). Do they have bald eagles out there too?

Sally said...

They have bald eagles in Ridgway by the river- seen them there but only seasonally when salmon? are doing one of their strange things.

It seemed so unusual that this eagle was actually talking to us. "You talkin to me?"

Linda Davick said...

I love that you got to see four toyotas running across the elk grove.

I saw my first bald eagle 2 weeks ago. I was surprised because it had a white head and a white tail. (I thought bald eagles had golden heads.) I found out that the white tails happen after the eagles are a few years old.

Did you take that photo?

Sally said...

Linda, Jon took the pictures. I'm unsteady with wildlife shots- get too excited I think.

Where did you see the bald eagle?

Linda Davick said...

I saw the bald eagle on a boat ride on the TN River Gorge! We saw him twice--once as the boat was going out and once on our way back. He had a nest on the edge of the river and the guide knew about it.

Sally said...

They're such beautiful birds