We have arrived in Yuma, Arizona but I still have a few things to post from our summer in Wyoming. When you are working on 400 acres, you never know what type of wildlife you will see. Last summer (2023), I spent several weeks watching a family of owls, before the babies got big enough and left the nest. They were about 50 yards from our RV, so I would spend my mornings drinking coffee and watching them from the RV. It was a perfect way to start the day! I was hoping the adults would be back this summer, but they must have found a new location. These owl photos are from 2023.
The adults would take turns in the nest with the two little ones. In the photo below, the adult in the back seems to be giving me the “stink eye” with the two little ones. My guess is the owl on the left is female, and the little one is male. From what I have read, the only way to tell them apart is size – females are larger.
Here’s a shot of the two baby owls.
Even though we did not have owls to entertain us this summer, we had plenty of other birds around the RV. Sometimes, a little too many!
The elusive pheasant chickens that we saw early in the summer, had babies. At one point, I was able to count a total of eleven pheasant chickens running around in the morning. They would run, not fly, whenever I opened up the RV door. But I did manage to get a few photos of them. There are seven of them in the photo below.
This is the best close up shot I could get, taken through our window.
One morning when driving out to the fields, we were greeted by some cows that had wandered on to the property. A neighbor raises cattle, and apparently doesn’t fence in his property. The water level in the Wind River was low this summer, so the cows wandered off, down the river, and tried to get on to Brad and Joanne’s property.
The cows hung around for about a week, before they left.
We had a mother and two baby deer all summer. It was fun watching them grow up.
And we had two separate moose sightings. One female moose hung out for a week.
And a few weeks later, we were greeted by an adult and small bull moose. The photo is hazy because of nearby forest fires.
One morning I kept hearing a strange clicking noise in the RV. It took a minute of searching, and discovered a pigeon walking on the skylight in the bathroom. He’s a peeping pigeon!
In the fall, the sandhill cranes arrive. We had hundreds of them.
We kept seeing a lot of wasps/bees around, but they didn’t really bother us. I did discover, in the tree above our RV, a giant wasp nest. It was too high up to do anything about it. I was actually impressed by how big it was.
My favorite animal sighting this summer, slightly surpassing the moose, was seeing a giant porcupine right outside the RV.
Even the pheasant chickens were curious about it.
All in all, a great summer of wildlife viewing, without even leaving the property. We also saw elk with little ones when we were out in the fields, but we stayed far away from them as they were passing through the property. Never mess with mama when her kids are around!
Quote of the day: “We don’t own the planet Earth, we belong to it. And we must share it with our wildlife.” – Steve Irwin
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