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Once again - the postings have gotten me thinking (always a dangerous and iffy experiment)

The recent flurry of postings about snakes and what you have seen and where got me reminiscing about all the nifty wildlife sightings I have had in my day. Some of them definitely stand out as being highlights of my wilderness experinces.

I enjoy seeing wildlife almost as much (and occasionally more) than seeing the beautiful vistas you get when out in the wilderness.

What are some of the coolest wildlife you have ever seen/encountered?
(Touching, surprising, scary, terrifying, alarming, unique, unexpected, majestic, awe-inspiring - whatever your reasons)

That's cool Neal. I had no idea what one looked like so I did a search and came up with this:

http://www.desertusa.com/may97/du_coati2.html

A Coati - man, that would be cool. I've never even come close to spotting one of those bad boys. "The raccoon of the desert" I've heard them called, but they can't be nearly as medlesome and pesky as the raccoons we had in Houston.

No trash-can was safe...

I have a fairly short "dream list" for spotting wildlife. Someday I'd like to run accross a:
Mountain Lion
Bobcat
Badger
Mountain Goat
But most of all I'd like to spot a Jackalope and a Snipe

olesma wrote:I have a fairly short "dream list" for spotting wildlife. Someday I'd like to run accross a:

Bobcat

Olesma, I ran into a Bobcat on Christmas Day about three years back give or take. I was in the middle of Tucson on a walk with my lady and two dogs. We came to an undeveloped field with a narrow deep wash running through it. On the far side of the wash about 15 yards away was a big Bobcat. The cat and I both went down on our haunches at the same time and just stared at each other for about 30 seconds and then the big cat was gone.

So sometimes you don't have to go too far to view the wildlife. I was a few blocks NW of Speedway and Rosemont. That is about as central as you can get.

Nealz mentioned coatis in the Huachucas. I can certainly confirm that they are there.

One time in Bear Canyon, just before sunset, I was walking the trail out to the ridge when some rustling from the hill side caught my attention. I stopped and watched for a solid ten minutes while a very large troop of coatimundi crossed the trail in front of me. They were about thirty feet away.

There were large red-haired males, some babies and every size in between. I figured at least 50 or 60 of them passed by. They knew I was there because every once and a while one would look my way.

It was a sight I will never forget. I decided not to get a picture because the flash would have interrupted their migration.

Here is a sighting from the NPS morning report that this woman won't forget about for some time....could you be that calm?


02-201 - Yellowstone NP (WY) - Bear Incident


A woman who was jogging by herself in the Lake area received minor injuries
when she encountered a bear around 7 a.m. on Saturday, May 26th. Abigail
Thomas, a 32-year-old U.S. Post Office employee at Lake, was jogging around
the Lake Lodge cabin loop when she encountered a male sub-adult grizzly
bear approximately 15 yards to her right. Thomas immediately stopped and
stood perfectly still; she did not make eye contact with the bear, and
continuously reassured the bear that she was not a threat. The bear stood
up on its back legs and sniffed the air, then dropped to the ground and
slowly approach Thomas on her right side. When it reached her, it began
sniffing her from the waist down, then opened its mouth and - very gently -
closed its mouth around Thomas' right upper thigh. The bear applied a small
amount of pressure, then released her leg. Thomas received no injuries,
other than some very minor contusions; her skin was not broken from the
bite. After Thomas felt the bear release her leg, she reached for her water
bottle and squirted the bear between the eyes. The bear immediately ran
from the area. Park officials praised Thomas for how well she handled the
potentially life-threatening bear encounter, remaining calm and focused
throughout the ordeal. [Public Affairs, YELL, 5/30]

I forgot one... Nothing rare as far as species go, but a lot of fun to watch. Across the creek from the Houston Brothers Trail there is an old homesite. On the banks of the creek when I was there last, there was a group of maybe a dozen chipmunks running back and forth, jumping over each other, just plain having fun. My friend and I sat and watched them for probably 15 minutes from the opposite side of the creek. It was really cool!

Here's another encounter; kind of sad though:

Very very fat hand fed squirrels on the trail to Yosemite Falls.

One of the coolest wildlife encounters that we have the pleasure to witness were three squirrels and a quail in the Blue Range along the Juan Miller Road. We couldn't believe it! They were all playing a follow the leader game. The first squirrel would run around the tree and jump up on the rock, than the other two squirrels would do the same, followed by, thats right you guested it, the quail. We watched in amusement as they reaped this about five times. Then it was the quails turn to lead. I couldn't stop talking about it for a week. I had never seen such a fat, happy quail before! Too cute.

Mike wrote:On the banks of the creek when I was there last, there was a group of maybe a dozen chipmunks running back and forth, jumping over each other, just plain having fun. My friend and I sat and watched them for probably 15 minutes from the opposite side of the creek. It was really cool!

Man - is this thread ever a good one for bringing up fond memories. You reminded me of a beauty Mike.

The summer I was a ranger I spent a weekend at a staffed cabin at a place called Fish Creek camp - just a wonderful spot with a beautiful 10 mile hike in. One morning we got up fairly early, there was a small colony of ground squirels (mini-bears in our lingo) about 15 yards or so off the front porch of the cabin. The colony was in a bit of a tizzy, all of them running around and barking, we wondered what got them all riled.

All of a sudden we see it - a small reddish-brown weasel darting around! Well, we hated mini-bears - they got into everything and if you weren't careful could ruin a good pack and all your food supplies, so we immediately started rooting for the weasel. In seconds we had the whole staff contingent on the porch (about 8 of us - rangers and staff), all of us cheering and whooping - man was that ever entertaining.

The whole scene lasted about 10 minutes. Finally the little weasel comes out of a hole holding a mini-bear in his mouth. We went NUTS! You'd think we were watching the Super-Bowl or something. The weasel seemed to understand and sort of pranced around for a little bit - then scurried off for breakfast. Absolutely one of the most entertaining wildlife sightings I ever had.

Later that day, with a little patience and a lot of not moving, I was able to get several hummingbirds to land on my finger and feed from the little red feeder we hung from the porch. I even got one of them so used to me I was able to stroke the feathers on his back (a male ruby-throated hummingbird). That was pretty special too.

Good times.

My main goal in hiking is to photograph wildlife. I have had countless animal encounters in my 11 years of hiking Arizona. I actually started hiking for exercise after I quit smoking. A few years back I purchased a digital camera and now I take it with me on every hike. Here are a few samples of recent finds...

Collared Lizard - Crotaphytus bicinctores

Speckled Rattlesnake - Crotalus Mitchelli

Subjects of interest to me are primarily reptiles, however, I do not discriminate, I'll photograph anything that will sit still long enough for me to get my camera out. If anyone has a hiking suggestion for photographing animals let me know. I only recently found this site, my hiking experiences up untill recently have been limited to only a few high traffic trails in Phoenix. I actually had no idea that there were so many hiking locations in Az.

Note: I post pictures on several different forums on the internet. It has been my experience that at some sites the forum regulars despise picture posts within the forum. If that is the case here just let me know and I will not do it again. If I receive positive feedback I will post more. I have thousands of pictures similar in quality to the above pics, and I do take requests.

Rexbmo, welcome to the site!
Great pictures by the way. I've never seen a speckled rattler before. I think joe, the webmaster prefers links to the pictures instead, but I'm not sure.

GTG

Man, those are some nice photos Rexbmo. Very clear, well composed and just high quality all around.

Welcome to the site and I hope you keep posting some photos like that.

Rexbmo:

Excellant Pics!

You may wanna post your pics offsite and link to them. That way we dont clog up Joe's system.

Keep up the good work!