Monday, December 13, 2010

Around the 'hood


Seems like I have encounters with various wildlife every day while we are on our winter range near the house. One of the pastures we use is in a riverbottom full of Cottonwoods, so I recently witnessed my Central Asian Ovcharka tree a raccoon right in the middle of the bedded sheep herd. He and I were both thrilled. He kept throwing himself at the tree barking, and I swear he was laughing about it as hard as I was. When I called him to come for his breakfast, he readily left the raccoon, so it obviously wasn't a big deal. The photo above shows the ewes coming toward me on their way to the bedground, and the one below shows their guardians, letting them pass.

Next weekend we turn out bucks (rams) in with the ewes for breeding, but in the meantime, this is the herd I pick my rams from. The colored sheep are buck lambs that will be used as counting sheep by the owner of the rams(one colored sheep per 100 is much easier to count than 100 sheep).

Speaking of bucks, I snapped this photo through the windshield - a pronghorn buck with just one horn sheath attached.

Waiting for a friend to meet me at a highway junction in preparation for a meeting last week, I watched two coyotes cross the busy highway. Here's one of them, near a road-killed deer with ravens on the fenceposts.

Checking the sheep in the river pasture yesterday, saw this Great Horned Owl, and even though it was sitting right in front of me, I had a heck of a time seeing it.

Last one today is of a bull moose in the river pasture. He had a magpie companion on his shoulder.

3 comments:

Matt Mullenix said...

Damn cool place.

Mary Strachan Scriver said...

Oh, how I love all this! Esp. those bright red sheep! Maybe I should get a bright red wool sweater!

Prairie Mary

Unknown said...

Beautiful photography, especially the moose.