Creatures Great and Small

Just as Denisa likes taking pictures of flowers and children, she also thrives on chasing animals through the forest to snap their photo.  Some days she is patient enough to get a clear picture, but more often we get blurry pictures or bare branches where the bird used to be perched.  We have deleted the 4,612 bad pictures to get to the 8 best ones.  Most of them are small creatures, but there's a special "great creature" story at the end of the blog if you make it that far.

We've seen a lot of hummingbirds in the mountains, and heard even more.  We didn't set up a bird feeder, because it was more fun watching them feed from the wildflowers.  When we took our bike ride, we noticed a hummingbird chasing Mark's bike.  Then we realized he was attracted to the bright red drink in his bottle holder.  We have also noticed that close-ups of hummingbirds usually make them look like angry little birds.

We see pronghorn in the fields around us almost every day.  This was fun because for once, Denisa caught one moving.  Fun fact:  the pronghorn is the fastest land animal on this continent.

We have seen so many chipmunks around our camping spot, but on one hike we had a ground squirrel pose for a picture.  We have learned that though very similar in appearance, the ground squirrel does not have a stripe on its face like the chipmunk.

Birds in trees are the hardest to photograph because our simple little point-and-shoot camera likes to focus on the leaves or the branch, leaving us with a blurry bird.  But occasionally, we get a clear bird so Denisa wanted to put it in the blog.

Besides chasing birds, Denisa likes chasing butterflies.  Instead of using a butterfly net, she chases them with a camera.  Sometimes she evens catches one.

In all of our hikes, we have only seen one herd of mountain sheep.  We used one of the pictures in the blog yesterday, but they were so dang cute we needed to have another one today.

We usually call this animal a marmot.  But when we were in Israel they called it a hyrax.  We hiked a mile with a woman yesterday that commented on the "whistle pigs" she saw at high elevations.  We knew exactly what she was talking about because these guys have a high pitched call that sounds just like a referee calling a ball game.

From our camp site for the last seven days, we can see our nearest neighbor's house in the valley.  The Frahm's live here year round, and have a herd of cattle in the pastures that surround us.  

Sherman Frahm showed us pictures of a baby coyote that his dog Gus scared up that morning.  He was kind enough to text us a picture of the little coyote.

But the "great creature" story also comes from the Frahms.  Several years ago on the 4th of July, they returned from the fireworks to find that a bear had been inside their home, helping himself to holiday cookies, brownies, and bread.  In fact, he ripped out half of this window to let himself in.

The bear was outside enjoying the snacks that he took from the kitchen when the family returned from the fireworks.  When the bear came back at 2 a.m., Sherman was ready for him.  The bear is now a rug hanging on the wall in their bedroom.

Sherman had told us that he saw a bear in the meadow while we were staying there.  Mark is sad that he didn't see the bear for himself, but Denisa is glad that no pictures of a live bear are part of this blog.