Blue Vista

Jemez Elk

We had almost given up seeing anything but birds and squirrels when we came around a corner and were surprised by a small herd of elk watering at a small manmade pond. 3 of them let me take their pics for a few seconds. The first photo is of the one that was the biggest. Don't know if these were cows or bulls as bulls have lost their antlers at this time of year. These did look to be very fat so were maybe pregent cows. But you don't normally see that much 'mane' on cows just the bulls. But they were very saggy as they are shedding their winter hair to get their nice slick summer hair. You can see a loose patch of hair on this ones flank that is just about ready to fall out. On the last photo you can see the white rump patch that elk us almost like the little white tail deer use when they thow up there white tail to warn the other deer of danger.

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.