Exploring Nature by Sheila Newenham
It’s the last weekend in August, and there’s record triple-digit heat in Salt Lake City (stop me when you’ve heard this before). It’s not ideal for wildlife viewing. Or for me, for that matter. But I am determined to find the Onaqui wild horses. They … Continue readingThe Famed Onaqui Wild Horses
“Sheep go where men don’t go. Goats go where sheep don’t go.” – Joe Rahn (Montana Wildlife, Fish and Parks) The Goats Word is that there are mountain goats at Bernard Peak on Lake Pend Oreille. Validating the rumor, Farragut State Park across the … Continue readingMountain Goats at Bernard Peak
I wore my hiking shoes today instead of my hiking sandals after yesterday’s snake encounter. Although, I’m not sure they’ll be much help with the bears and mountain lions today. An Old Railroad Trail The Cowiche Canyon trail follows Cowiche Creek along an old … Continue readingCowiche Creek Canyon Trail
The Turnbull National Wildlife Refuge website lists among their 45 species of mammals elk, deer, moose, badgers, river otters, porcupines, beavers, bobcats, and cougars. I set my alarm for the following morning. Fog hung in the mountain valleys highlighting the ridges and trees as I … Continue readingTurnbull National Wildlife Refuge
They said there’d be armadillos. They weren’t wrong. I arrived at Harris Neck National Wildlife Refuge, a 2760 acre mix of saltwater marsh, pine and deciduous woods, and grasslands, midmorning on a gorgeous, mostly sunny spring day. Before its establishment as a refuge, Harris Neck … Continue readingHarris Neck National Wildlife Refuge
If you google “Corkscrew Audubon Swamp” plus “Florida Panther”, you’ll find videos of startled people and startled cats like this one on You Tube by Andrea Wipperfurth (March 2016). So when I saw that Audubon Corkscrew Swamp was near where we’d be staying in Florida, … Continue readingAudubon Corkscrew Swamp
Pack Your Patience It’s 7:45 on a Monday morning, twenty minutes after the sun pierced the horizon and started to lighten the sky. The eleven-mile, one-lane Cades Cove wildlife loop is at a stop-and-crawl from the outset. I can’t see the front of this train … Continue readingCades Cove Wildlife Loop
The Smoky Mountains aren’t a place for quiet, intimate, or prolonged wildlife encounters. It’s a place for the masses to get a glimpse of the wild that could change their life. And that’s just as important. My go-to methods for finding local wildlife consist of … Continue readingFinding Bears in the Smoky Mountains
A Different Culture The bears in Kodiak are different than other bears I’ve been around. Like people, various populations have their own cultures and dialects. The body language that might tell a Katmai bear to settle down would send a Kodiak brown bear running over … Continue readingKodiak Brown Bears
We’re sitting on top of a bluff overlooking the Thumb River in Kodiak National Wildlife Refuge, watching and waiting for Kodiak’s famed brown bears. The slope down to the river is steep, partially vegetated, but mostly exposed dirt and rock. A wildlife trail leads down … Continue readingBold, Curious Kodiak Island Fox