Today was a pretty good bird day. Merlin (bird identification app) did a great job at hearing tiny well hidden winged things in conifers. I got very annoyed at one point today as it kept telling me it didn’t know what a very loud chirruping was. Pretty sure in retrospect that it was a ground squirrel so outside of its remit!
I watched a flock of tree swallows (shouting loudly enough to be identified) mobbing and in turn being hassled by a small raptor. I am fairly confident it was a merlin, but only based on size and aerobatic feats as it wasn’t at all close and I couldn’t get a lock on it with the binoculars as it was too fast.
Aside from the birds we had a great time watching the ground squirrels who were surprisingly brave around humans and kept popping back up out of their holes to see if we had gone away yet. Mila gets bonus spotting points for shouting “deer” many times after spotting the seemingly solitary animals just off the road. We all saw the herd of Elk- and the tourists trying to get closer and trespassing on a restricted access area- but we chose not to stop thinking we could return. Sadly when we did they had moved further away from the road, but the new binoculars came into their own finding them lying down probably a kilometre away. A park warden told us that it was a maternity herd and they had just given birth. The males wander off on their own at that point apparently. Just saying.
What was really surprising today was how little we had to travel outside the town to experience a little bit of wilderness and the animals that live there. With that in mind I have borrowed bear spray from the hotel for our hike tomorrow…