Caldera Wildlife

It is the wild animals that everyone always wants to see and photograph or at least I do. On this trip I got some good photos of a chipmunk that was eating grass at one of the places we pulled over to take some scenic photos.

At another place a pair of these birds were catching bugs on the ground. So far I haven't been able to identify them yet. They had a lot of yellow/green on them and were just larger than a sparrow.

These prairie dogs were in a large village of them on the drive from the paved road to the Visitors Center at the Caldera. We did see a badger run across the road in front of us but I couldn't get the camera up in time. The Center people said there were lots of badgers in the prairie dog village trying to catch them. The badgers help keep the rodents down. The 'dogs' are cute but leave lots of deep holes in the ground for deer, elk, horses, cows, and even people to step in and get hurt.

 From the paved road we saw a herd of about 30 elk but they didn't want to come close to us. We could barely see some smaller ones, probably this years calves running and playing.

 There were elk in the trees here.

We also saw some deer but again couldn't get a photo before they were gone.