Today is an “all day rain” type of day and I’m working on the books at the computer. Coming downstairs to make a cup of tea, I look out my kitchen window and see our “pet” doe walking across the driveway – with her brand new fawn in tow. She has her fawns in our yard every year. She even has her own personal guard dog. Leelee chases coyotes out of the yard, but completely ignores the deer, so it’s a great place to raise a family!
Rainy day baby
This is a video clip that I actually took a month ago (we don’t have that much snow left anymore, thank goodness) but I’m just now getting around to sharing it. It’s just so fun! Woolly Bully makes toys out of things that he can throw around. And trust me, there are quite a few things that he can throw! Check out his new game of toss the bale.
Well, we waited long enough for it, but it’s finally here. Spring has come to our high country ranch. Yesterday was a coyote, flower and baby buffalo day while this morning I got to watch a moose head down the driveway to the house. Unfortunately, I wasn’t at the house – I was a half mile away taking my walk and just happened to be looking back at the house when a big black critter galloped across the hillside and down the driveway. Even at that distance, a moose is easy to recognize. They’re huge with a body about the size of a bison but with long legs and neck. Sort of like a long necked buffalo on stilts. The picture here isn’t of this moose – my moose this morning was a cow (just imagine this one without antlers). If only I’d stayed home and looked out the window!
Moose in the morning
Rained all day yesterday – not snow – and that’s something to celebrate. My walk this morning found a few buttercups scattered around and the pasque flowers have buds. It’s late for the flowers this year, but we can expect an abundance of them in a few weeks. I eventually ran into the bison and the moms all looked at me like I was an intruder, grunting to their calves to keep close. Further on, I watched a coyote trot across the meadow still full of snow, but soft enough that she kept sinking in. She stopped to do some mousing – jumping into the air and landing front feet first on the mouse, a quick chomp and she was off to find more. What a great morning!
Some days start with a bang and we just get soooo much done. Then there are the days that start like this and you know it’s going to be a long one.
Yup, they're stuck. Again.
Sweet feed for the Sweetpea
Well, I’ve never gotten quite so many emails over a post so I figured I’d put an end to the suspense. The easiest way to bring you up to speed on the Sweetpea saga, is to show you this little clip 
. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5EIWogWkDE
Last summer, Imiko – one of our older cows – stopped making milk the middle of the summer and her baby didn’t grow as quickly as she should. Because she was so little, when she started eating hay, she was often getting crowded out and our harsh winter wasn’t helping her any. Christmas day was the the turning point of all that. We went out to feed and realized that Sweetpea was missing. We went looking for her, and found her upside down in a snowdrift where she had been all night long. Poor thing. We could see where the herd had surrounded her and tried to get her on her feet, but all they have are horns and they were pushing her uphill – they just couldn’t do it. So between us, Craig and I were finally able to get her on her feet, but we did it with heavy hearts. She was very weak and we were afraid that she’d never make it. Unfortunately, a 6 month old baby buffalo, even a little one, is way beyond our ability to pick up or put in the truck, so we surrounded her with hay (which she ignored) and watched with worried faces as she stumbled her way back to the herd. I’ll tell you what happened in a few days !
Sweetpea after her ordeal in a snowbank all night
One of our favorite sayings around here is that, “We have 7 months of visitors and 5 months of winter.” Indeed, when weather is warm and roads are accessible, we have waves of visitors. And that’s fine – taking care of guests in the gorgeous green summer months is easy. But we have to give special kudus to those who not only dare to visit us in the winter, but revel in the beauty, drama and contrasts that our severe winter months throw at us. One such intrepid traveler last winter was well known wildlife artist, Jay Johnson. On a tight schedule, he had no flexibility in the days he could visit and ended up here on two of the coldest, subzero days of the winter. Jay loves “playing with light” – that’s obvious if you look at his paintings – and it was so fascinating to see the difference in our photographs. We saw the same things he saw, but while my photos were “accurate and interesting”, Jay’s photos brought out the magic in a “buffalo winter”. Can’t wait to see what he does with it in a painting!
Photo by Jay Johnson
Guests continue to play an important role in increasing cavity nesting bird populations on the Reserve by monitoring, repairing and putting up nest boxes. Of the 19 nest boxes that were up at the beginning of the summer, mountain bluebirds used 6, tree swallows used 2, and house wrens used 6 boxes. In addition, within our camp enclosure we had the usual birds including flickers, sapsuckers and bluebirds nesting in dead trees, wrens in a house by the picnic tables, a couple of robins made their nests on the cabins, and one intrepid house wren pair found a tiny knothole in one of the cabins and raised their babes alongside guests (the hole has been plugged and a new wren house set up nearby). We had a surprise in one of our nest boxes on the corrals, when a red squirrel enlarged the entrance hole, filled the nest box with bison wool, and raised her 4 baby squirrels there. Very fun to watch! Bison wool continues to be a common nest material in most of the nest boxes, as well as in tree nests of vireos and ruby-crowned kinglets, and even in deer mice nests. Guests in August helped us put up larger nest boxes for saw-whet owls and kestrels, so we’re already excited about next year!
Male Bluebird
Northern Flicker
Well, chickens really ARE the ultimate recylcer – and all of our “leftovers” get thrown out by the chicken house. So, imagine our surprise when we saw this odd sight – a slice of pizza sitting up in the fir tree by the chicken house.
Pizza Slice on high.
But on closer inspection, we realized that the pizza slice wasn’t all by itself. It was being munched on by our mama red squirrel. So who said that squirrels eat nuts?!
Take Up Pizza
