Want to know more about the watchable wildlife around you? Want to know the spots that people in your area are visiting to find their mammals, birds, invertebrates, reptiles, amphibians and more?
The (no more than weekly) WildObs Wildlife Update e-mail brings you encounters from the WildObs wildlife database centered around you.
If you love getting out and about in the USA you probably already know the amazing people at US-Parks.com, and know that they provide you with online information on national parks & monuments, scenic byways, getaways, and even hiking trails. They are passionate about the great outdoors, and have developed an amazing site to help you plan your outdoor adventures.
Visit the US-Parks.com website...
Yellowstone National Park by US-Parks.com
So, we are very pleased to announce that…
WildObs and US-Parks.com have partnered to add wildlife encounters to their outdoor information.
US-Parks are adding WildObs encounters to their already impressive wildlife & park pages, allowing people to get a feel for what species have been seen recently, and what they could be lucky enough to encounter.
For the WildObs community, our crowd-sourced wildlife database gets better with each new viewer, and subsequent new contributor. An encounter with a new species at a local wildlife place could become the inspiration for that next trip, that new ‘lifer’ (new species on life-list) or wonderful photography subject. The more who share their nature, the more we can all find our nature.
As the WildObs database continues to grow we can start to do some fun queries. Let us know if you have more information you’d like to see. Here are the top reported species for November. Do you have these on your life-list?
(This post sat in the drafts folder for too long, so I am setting it free. )
Original railway across the mouth of Coal Creek Canyon
This year’s closure of highway 72 due to an impact with the bridge by truck have caused more closures than even this year’s train derailment. As such our family trips and commutes between Coal Creek Canyon and Golden/Boulder/Denver have been via Golden Gate State Park and/or Flagstaff (passing Walker Ranch & Gross Reservoir.) These trips have been longer than usual, but glorious in wildlife & scenery.
Coming down through Golden Gate State Park of a morning allows iconically Colorado views of Elk browsing through sun-light streaks and Aspen trees. That atop priceless views out to the snow emphasized mountain peaks of the continental divide. Easier in spring than in the blizzards of winter, and a fantastic drive.
Bighorn Sheep on Highway 6
One return trip we elected to come up Highway 6 (towards Blackhawk, then along Highway 119.) I always enjoy the sights of Bighorn sheep along that route, and maintain it is the local place for Coloradans and tourists to get some fun close-ups of sheep (from the luxury of their car.) This trip was no exception, with 5 males with huge horns right by the roadside. Hugh horns, solid and powerful. Wonderful.
To make another change we took a route via Boulder, Flagstaff mountain and Gross Reservoir. Suddenly a bobcat crosses the road right in front of us. Rather than disappearing into the woods the bobcat chose a group of rocks and bedded down. The cats tail was long, perhaps a foot long, with a white tip.
Interestingly this tail hardly stopped moving, the cat flicked it continually. Note: how the magpie are crying their disapproval at the cat, and a hummer buzzes on by.
All in all, despite quite a lot of disruption to our schedule and increased journey times, there was some real upside to exploring new routes in/out of the canyon.
As the WildObs database continues to grow we can start to do some fun queries. Let us know if you have more information you’d like to see. Here are the top reported species for November. Do you have these on your life-list?
Would you like to allow others to be able to share and enjoy your most viewed or most recent WildObs on your personal website or blog? So long as you can insert a bit of JavaScript into your template or page, you can. WildObs will update this widget dynamically as you enter more species and encounters.
Log in to WildObs and visit your WildObs Widget Builder to pick type and style (sizes and colors.) You can make the widget wide or tall, have it blend into your site’s colors, and
You will receive a little snippet of HTML to paste into your website or blog, which will update daily with the your latest encounters. Here is an example of what it can show:
Share your wildlife on your blog or website...
Note: Some blogs sites do not allow JavaScript to be placed into the template. If you have any problem embedding this widget please contact me at @wildobs and I’ll do my best to get things sorted.
We had a glorious weekend here in Colorado. Warm, blue skies, just a perfect day for sitting on the deck after a morning’s kayaking at Gross Reservoir…
While out on the deck the Turkey were audibly and visibly very active; rooting around, gobbling at the world, even some chest bumping squabbles. Generally being Turkeys. A few times we heard their tone change, and felt they were on edge. That made us look more closely to see what was around…
First up came momma bear with junior (not a small bear itself) and we saw/heard them walk ‘through’ our thin fence and enter our yard. I wanted to move them on (not too aggressively, but firmly) so I wandered down the driveway making it clear they were not welcome inside the yard. In the years here we’ve interacted with many bear, so I was able to make my presence felt w/o getting too close, or putting myself in risk. Momma huffed at me a couple of times as junior climbed over there fence and then she followed him. She made it look to easy. Such a big bear, yet so nimble.
Not long after we one again heard the turkeys call, and looking down the hill saw yet another bear:
Bear traveling in opposite direction.
Apparently it was also a good day for bears to be out wandering.
)
