Bondurant, Wyoming, gets one heck of a lot of snow in the winter, but grows lush crops of native hay in creekside meadows in the summer. The Campbell Ranch at Bondurant is an old-time outfit, been there forever it seems, and still uses draft horse teams to cut hay in the summer and feeds the …
Author: Cat Urbigkit
Wild beauty
Last weekend, my family went rock-climbing in the Wyoming Range. Even though Jim and I were much better at it 25 years/pounds ago, it was a blast. Cass will head off to college next month, so these are the good times. I’m not looking forward to the empty-nest thing at all, and am considering that …
Dog/sheep days of summer
It’s 65 degrees this mid-morning, and the herd at the house has been complaining about the heat and mosquitoes. Here are old ewe, Friendly, with some of the orphan lambs, and Rant the Aziat, all trying to enjoy the shade.
Things to smile about
After depressing myself with yesterday’s post about eagles, I decided I’d better share some better news. Remember the seven pronghorn antelope fawns I photographed a few weeks ago? They are really growing. Here are five babies from the same meadow, taken earlier this week. That same morning, I saw this cottontail at a gravel pit …
Such an unnecessary loss
Press accounts tell us this week that PacifiCorp, which does business locally as Rocky Mountain Power, has agreed to cough up $10 million for the killing of golden eagles in Wyoming through electrocution. Although the federal court case against the company was for 34 violations of the federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act, according to the …
Cheers to the little guy
I am one of those people (as I suspect are many who read this blog) who roots for the underdog. I laughed out loud both times in the last year as I watched a small and fierce kestrel harassing and hitting a large red-tailed hawk, making the much bigger bird flee. I like cheering for …
Babysitting
I drive by a hay meadow outside of Pinedale on a regular basis and always look at the pronghorn antelope that inhabit that spot. In the last few weeks, there were about five does that had their fawns in the meadow. This afternoon I had to laugh, since this one doe had apparently been assigned …
Wet season delights
It’s rained here almost every afternoon for a month, making big changes to our range, which has suffered from 10 years of drought. Jim and I had to look these birds up in the bird book because we’ve never seen them in the hay meadow before. They are Wilson’s phalaropes. It has a peculiar way …
Pronghorn peace
I’ve been watching a young pronghorn doe this past week, as she’s been hanging out, alone, in the hay meadow on the north side of the highway. The native grass is growing really well, the irrigation ditch is full, and it’s very beautiful, quiet and peaceful. The most disturbance that occurs there is when the …
Rainy range
We’ve been blessed with a rainy spring and the animals respond accordingly. This is the yearling Aziat Rant playing with Rena, the two-year old Akbash (the all white one), this morning as the sun was coming up over the Wind Rivers. I knew when they walked up to each other nose-to-nose that play fights would …