Different secret forest! Different band!
Still gorgeous. Miss Cassidy Rain. 🙂
Whither goest thy path?
12 05 2023Comments : 8 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
In the secret forest
11 05 2023
You didn’t know we have a secret forest, did you?
OK, it’s really not that secret; it’s a narrow little forested strip on top of one of the lower ridges. I adore any pix I’m able to get of the mustangs in a treed setting because it’s so rare to find them in a treed setting! It does sometimes make them a bit hard to spot (yay for the greys!).
The dapply light was lovely on Kestrel’s emerging dapples … emerging as she sheds her winter coat for her summer finery.
Comments : 12 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Side-eye
10 05 2023
Little Mister Maiku found a swampy place to roll. 🙂
How DOES he see through that marvelous forelock?!
After the crazy, muddy winter, we are super dry again. But there’s water in numerous places this spring in Spring Creek Basin, and the wild ones know where to find them all.
Comments : 8 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Time but a moment
9 05 2023
If you look closely, you can see a mustang grazing at upper left. If you look a bit closer, you might be able to see that this old juniper is growing out of a (crack in this) sandstone boulder.
This grandmother tree certainly made sure to send up many fingers through the available space(s).
This is the view from the other, downhill, side … and it’s the view that got me interested in walking up to investigate further. Bit of a grumpy-rock missing an eye, eh? And I looked, but no Excalibur did I find also buried within the stone.
Think of the seasons and years and heat and cold this tree and this stone have witnessed, together. And the stone likely thinks the tree is just a wee, youthful thing.
As a colorful bonus to this post …
This uber-handsome fellow was not in Spring Creek Basin – or even in Disappointment Valley. He was a good bit farther south (still in Colorado) and stopped to catch the rays along a bike trail where I stopped to gasp and puff … err, catch my breath. I couldn’t believe he stayed still long enough for me to fish out my phone and snap his portrait, but he did, and I was happy as I love these beasties at least as much as I love our horned lizards! It won’t be long, and we’ll be seeing our own Disappointment Valley-native collared lizards.
**Update: I saw my first Disappointment Valley-native collared lizard just yesterday – also while riding my bike, as it turned out. It was MUCH too quick for my full admiration, but temps are warming, and soon they’ll be sunning and lazy.
Comments : 12 Comments »
Categories : Juniper, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Wilderness
Wind-machine days
8 05 2023
Mysterium was rocking her glamour shots with the wind machine functioning perfectly. …
And then Juniper photobombed her. 🙂 🙂 🙂
Comments : 10 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Still all that
7 05 2023
Storm, looking at another band stallion … looking all handsome-like. 🙂 The more things change … the less things change?!
Comments : 8 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Look and ye shall find
6 05 2023
Storm’s band has a knack for staying out of sight in the back-of-beyond backcountry of Spring Creek Basin. Then, just as I’m really putting out the effort to find them – not just “casually” looking for them – they appear, in the best-most-beautiful place.
Because of course they do. 🙂
Despite our recent unsettled weather, rain remains elusive (nearly as much as Storm’s band).
(Storm himself isn’t actually in the above pic, but don’t worry, he’ll make an appearance here soon.)
Comments : 11 Comments »
Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Open to the sun
5 05 2023
The first open claret cup bloom I’ve seen this spring. … More obviously to open soon!
Comments : 10 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Wild flowers
Shattered
4 05 2023
It is with a shattered heart that I report that Dundee’s big, handsome dun colt, Ranger, shown above with his aunties, Aiyanna and Rowan, has disappeared. It’s so hard to bear the unfairness and suddenness of it that it doesn’t even seem real. Dundee was a fiercely protective new mother and did everything right in all the times I saw them together. … It’s a reminder that our beloved wild ones ARE wild and that life is not guaranteed.
Fly free, Ranger. You were so loved.
Comments : 28 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Chasing green
3 05 2023
Kestrel gives me an eyeball while she searches for fresh, yummy, actual grass around the bases of the green greasewood on a bench just above one of Spring Creek Basin’s main arroyos. The horses definitely eat the greasewood, but at this particular time while I was with them, they were all about that grass, which was a few inches tall where sheltered by the woody stems of the greasewood. It must have been satisfying for *them* to eat … *listening* to them snip the bunches of grass with their teeth and chew was incredibly satisfying for *me*! 🙂
It’s worth noting that this is also a season for “bling.” As the horses forage among the greasewood, bits of the branches get tangled in manes and forelocks. You can see a bit in Kestrel’s mane already.
Comments : 8 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 