Wild horses finally. (20130216)

Jamie and I had made arrangements to make a run for wild horses. While there are many "targets" for the day, wild horses will be our primary objective. After several weekends of stellar weather and lighting, today's conditions have much less than ideal. We will suffer overcast skies and winds ranging from 20-60 kph. We spot a high flying bird of prey that appears to be either a juvenile bald eagle, or a golden eagle (one on the wish list for the day). Soon we have a brief encounter in red fox ( #2 on the list). within 10 miles we check the moose off our list. Our Great Grey search was fruitless, but at the end of that "track" we found some Whitewinged Crossbills. Unfortunately these incidents were all brief and no images were captured. Our first decent opportunity for a capture were a group of "Whiskey" Jack's.

We had been seeing Deer by the score, we decided to stop and grab a couple images of a group of Does feeding in the spruce.

More Grey Jays and then a surprise opportunity was provided by some Blue Jays.

So, where are the wild horses, you are asking? We found our first group of 3 wild horses, this was a pleasant surprise as we found them in an area where I have never found horses previously. This group were on a ridge over looking the road, using the ridge as a barrier of safety.

While we were quite close and the horses were a little nervous, we grabbed a couple a images.

The third of the group is this beautiful cream coloured unit with a white patch that runs from its ears through to the midpoint of the nostrils.

Things were pretty quite for the next couple of hours, more Grey Jays and deer, but little else. In the heart of horse country we find a herd of 10 horses. This is the same herd that Len and I found in October and that Jamie saw 2 weeks previous. Here is one of the Mare's.

We had spotted these ponies about 500 yards off the road and with the wind in our favour we tried to get closer. at about 150 yards they got nervous, so we grabbed some shots and backed off. This one reminds me of a teenager with the hair in front of the eyes.

Here is shot of what I believe is a second pregnant mare.

We finished up with a group shot, I couldn't get all ten in the image without then looking like little specs.

The other group of four that we found were out at about 2 or 3 miles on an open hillside. There appeared to be only 3 but after getting to review photo's I found a fourth. Th e afternoon just seemed to slip away. We found 3 mature Bald Eagles and what looked like 150 Ravens. About another 100 deer rounded out the day. We finished off with keen eyed Jamie finding two different Northern Shrikes, not greeting card material, but sufficient evidence.

well that was our trip, I hope everyone out there has a great wildlife weekend.
Turbo