Who better than a pinto girl to show off our snow … and how much had already melted by late afternoon?
Thanks, Chipeta. We appreciate your lovely cooperation!
Fascinating mix of snow on the ground and still on some tree branches while south-facing slopes have nearly all slurped up all that snowy-good moisture (despite the lack of sunshine most of the day). We got maybe an inch … 2 max. It was melting while it was falling. Eh. We’re desperate for ANY moisture. I think the temp hit 40F. … The forecasters claim this morning’s low temp will be 7 or thereabouts. Yeesh. But it’ll keep some of that snow on the ground and soaking in slowly, under another full-blue Colorado sky.
Elk attention-getter squeaky toy now available online!
Juuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuust kidding. 🙂 I didn’t use any squeaky toy or other artificial attractant. They were immediately west of the west boundary entrance to/from Spring Creek Basin, and clearly, I was the most fascinating thing they’d seen all day!
Note Ms. Grumpypants in the middle with the broken ear? I could see even at a distance that something was odd with her ear. Even zooming in, I’m not sure why she has the white hair at the base of each ear.
(If something looks odd about the font, I apologize. It looks different from usual, but in the drafting mode, I can’t tell exactly what (a serif font as opposed to sans serif?), and I’m not sure whether it’s something I did or WordPress doing another one of its odd “updates.”)
I saw TWO bald eagles that day (about a week ago now), as well as two golden eagles or juvenile bald eagles; I didn’t have my binoculars then, and I couldn’t tell from a distance. When I went back much later with my big gun (as opposed to my wimpy phone), one bald eagle was in that tree, which seems to be the favorite tree (and why not, with that perfect stick, err, branch?).
Non-moisture-bearing clouds were overhead, but in the distance, a bit of sunlight was shining on Utah’s La Sal Mountains. Bit of a messy cottonwood foreground, but you get the idea. 🙂 (Who spotted the raven doing a photobomb flyby in the middle background?)
This is a strange image, I know, but I was zoomed in as I initially scrolled through the pix on the computer (culling out-of-focus ones), and when this pic came up, it was cropped like that, and I liked it. 🙂 To each, their own, eh?
A more typical eagle-launch image. Too bad s/he flew away from me, but it was warm-ish, critters were out, and eagle had other fish to fry (not in dry Disappointment Creek, though) and things to do!
Wow, do I love seeing them. 🙂
(The title is a reference to a phrase I sometimes see about “bird-on-a-stick” pix: portrait shots of birds perched on branches. As a non-bird photographer, I figure I haven’t yet gotten bored with shooting birds or raptors of any kind on sticks or branches of any kind!)
Question: Is Mysterium posing, or is she alert to something?
Hint: She does love her naps, when it might look like she’s “posing,” but she really doesn’t do posing. 🙂
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?!?!?!!!!
I was sitting on the ground, lens trained on some horses, when I heard them spook and looked up to see that something had caught their attention. THEY didn’t go far at all (more a spook-in-place kind of thing), and then I saw a flash of moving-red … FOX! Wow. It must have been in one of the little/shallow curvy arroyos nearby, and I’m not sure what spooked IT. I must have walked semi-past it earlier to go uphill of where the horses were (note the view beyond Mysterium!).
Unfortunately, there was a tree between us, and then it disappeared into one of the drainage folds … and when I caught sight of it next, it was nearly over the ridge. I wish it had stopped to give us a quick look, but nope.
Wowowowowow! I think the mustangs were just as thrilled (OK, interested) as I was. I doubt they see many flashy red foxes around. (We weren’t super far from where I found the fox last year, but we weren’t close, either. I don’t know what kind of territory a fox covers?)
We (all the “we” people under the same sky I was under) had fantastic, long-lasting sun dogs yesterday! (Sun dogs … sundogs … which do you prefer? I’ve probably gone back and forth.) Sometimes both sides were super bright and prismatic, and other times, only one side was bright, and the other side was dim – and then they would swap.
What ARE sun dogs?
According to Google AI:
“Sundogs (or parhelia) are bright, colorful spots of light appearing on either side of the sun, caused by sunlight refracting through hexagonal ice crystals in high-altitude clouds, common in cold weather. They look like “phantom suns” or rainbow-like patches, often red closest to the sun, and usually signal approaching rain or storms, despite being associated with cold, clear conditions.”
The Almanac says that seeing sun dogs often means that “rain is on the way” and to “look out for foul or wet weather!” We in Colorado would challenge the word “foul” because we’ll all be rejoicing greatly if we get any kind of wet weather! We do have “PM rain/snow showers” in Thursday’s forecast, along with very cold temps for several days afterward. The temp yesterday hit 60F again, so that’ll be a big change.
If you’re wondering about why sun dogs are called sun dogs, the Almanac has an answer for that, too:
“According to Greek mythology, Zeus walked his dogs across the sky, and those “false suns” in the sky on either side of the sun’s disk were his two dogs.”
It’s fun to imagine that the ancient Greeks also liked to walk their dogs to enjoy nature and get some exercise. 🙂
Bundle up, and THINK SNOW!
(I should mention that the above pic was taken from the edge of Big Gypsum Valley, above Gypsum Gap, which, from that direction, is the gateway to Disappointment Valley.)
To remember how I did this post last year, I had to go all the way back to Valentine’s Day to find the post recapping the previous year (2024, then) in images. This year (for 2025), I’m happy to announce that for once, though I procrastinated, it wasn’t THAT long, and it was in plenty of time (OK, one day to spare) to make the Dec. 31 deadline.
Deep breath: This was a hard year. Last winter was rough (read: bad dry), which meant the rest of the year was rough (read: really bad horrible awful dry) in terms of drought. Monsoons didn’t hit their stride over Southwest Colorado, so we didn’t get much rain, either. Federal employees were hard hit, too, and one of our young BLM’ers was illegally fired from the new job he loved.
But we also had some good-news happenings: Thankfully, he was reinstated, and we have a strong range team in Ryan, Anton and Laura. We got some new signs installed, including the replacement of the old, sun-bleached, weather-beaten interpretive sign for the new information “kiosk” that greets visitors upon entering Spring Creek Basin. Fertility control (native PZP) continues to be an extraordinary benefit to our herd in terms of management and keeping roundups and removals at bay.
In wider Colorado mustang news, the BLM short-term holding facility at the Cañon City prison complex closed in November, BLM and Colorado Department of Corrections being unable to reach a contract agreement. That’s not-great news in terms of uncertainty for rounded up and removed Colorado mustangs. Where will they go? In semi-balanced decent news (?), all of the Colorado mustangs that were in holding there (about 100 at the time) were adopted or went to private sanctuary or are currently in foster situations for a planned adoption in March (and that all happened despite federal employees, including BLM’ers, being out of work (or working without pay) because of the government shutdown).
What follows is a pic from each month of the past year and a bit of reminiscence of what was happening when I captured the image of a mustang or mustangs. Many of these pix have been featured previously on the blog; some haven’t. If you make it to the end, there’s a bonus pic … one of my favorite of the past year.
This is one of my very most favorite pix of the entire year. I love it so much, it’s the background image on my computer. I’m aware that I likely post a lot of images of Buckeye’s family; you won’t be surprised to know that they’re among my most favorite mustangs. I considered this image as the *bonus* image … but it was one wildly beautiful day of snow (well, I was out with the horses, watching the snow coming for at least two hours before it finally reached us), and it didn’t match the otherwise very dry *year*. … So it gets the January title.
Did I say that I love Buckeye’s family? You can forgive me for singling them out, right? The three mares weren’t born here, but gosh, they are treasures from our sister herd in Sand Wash Basin, and I’m so grateful that we have them. And yes, that was February. Utah’s La Sal Mountains may not have been the *closest* snow, but we sure didn’t have much.
March is still fuzzy-coat weather with signs of approaching spring, especially in the high desert of Southwest Colorado. Fortunately, we had ponds early in the year. They’d all go dry before some rain this past fall put water back in a couple of them, including the one pictured above with Chipeta. This pond is nicely full currently – and has mustangs taking advantage of its water.
April found Sundance not far from the pond pictured above, and he still had his band at that time. Later in the year, he lost them, and he’s been by himself since then. He has wandered a bit, following vegetation and available water. The stately ol’ guy is still around … I see him now and then, napping in the sunshine or grazing on the side of a ridge.
This wasn’t especially the best pic I took in May, but I love both the perspective and the sort of inside joke that Cassidy Rain always likes to be the farthest away from the two-legged. That day was a pretty warm one, and the band was in an area of basin where I rarely find them. It’s not a place with a lot of trees (in fact, there are very few), but they had found a couple, and were comfortable together in the shade near sunset.
My best boy Storm made a brief appearance in the northern part of the basin in June … one of the first times I’d seen him since he’d lost his band the previous autumn. Bittersweet. I haven’t seen him since about July, when he was at a water source with another band as I was trying to shoot the rising moon.
Ah, July, the month the Deer Creek Fire at the base of Utah’s La Sal Mountains sparked. It wasn’t the biggest wildfire of the season, and it wasn’t even the biggest with smoke visible from Spring Creek Basin and Disappointment Valley, but it was uncomfortably close to home. It was a reminder (as if we need any more) that it’s hotter and dryer out there, and we all need to be super aware and careful.
Fortunately, the mustangs live in the moment (while the humans obsess over the wildfire updates), and they still enjoyed peaceful days such as this: Three mares content with their world and each other.
Finally, as summer gave way to fall, Mother Nature cried her best tears and filled some ponds for the mustangs. THAT brought huge relief to us all (if I may speak for my four-legged friends as well as myself). Interestingly, visible at upper left in this image is Benchmark Lookout, a U.S. Forest Service wildfire-watch tower staffed during the critical seasons of the year (which includes September). In this backcountry, we are massively grateful for those who watch for and provide critical information about wildfires, as well as those who work to contain them, allowing them to provide some benefit in some cases while trying to keep property and lives intact.
It might be about now in the list that you’re thinking, “for talking about dry it was, she sure included a lot of pix of ponds.” It’s not because we had so much water; it’s because we’re massively grateful for the water we had.
There’s no water in this image – and it was November, before snow graced the peaks on our northwestern horizon – but the ponies are lined out on their way out to graze after drinking at a little place I call the marsh. This is post-sunset, but wow was it gorgeous under the autumn light. … And it’s not UNgorgeous at blue hour.
You’ve just seen this image of Temple with Temple (yes, the same) Butte and McKenna Peak in the background under a stream of stormy-looking (they didn’t produce a drop over us) clouds. I decided not to choose a pic from the bit of snow we got at the very beginning of December because the above is what we saw the whole rest of the month. The weather has been warm and dry … and that’s awfully nice for getting around and playing outdoors (60s! in Colorado!! in December!!?!) … but if things don’t change in the next few months, I’m going to be singing the same ol’ why-won’t-it-snow song that seems to be stuck on repeat.
And your bonus:
This was an evening in June. Nobody wanted to pose much, and I was going bananas, trying to get somebody – anybody – in front of that background in that subtle, delicious light. Finally, this young stallion obliged. And it seems to sum things up a bit: Hot this year? Yes. Dry? Gosh, yeah. Anxiety-inducing? Pretty much like always … with an extra edge. But! Beautiful, peaceful, a place of escape from the world’s ills (at least the headline type). Kind of a promise that it’s there … out there … and sometimes we don’t have to search all that far for it.
And there you (kinda) have it: 2025 in the rearview. It’s always hard to select just one pic for each month (plus a bonus!), but I hope you enjoyed this little recap.
In best-of-all news, I spent a lot of time (again) with my beloved mustangs in the best place on Earth (in my ever-so-humble opinion). 🙂
And close to that is my gratitude for all of you readers who follow the mustangs and our pictorial journal of peaceful, wild, beautiful life here in Spring Creek Basin. Thank you so much, and I hope you all have a peaceful, wild, beautiful 2026 (with lots more moisture!!!!!!!!!!!!!)!
I don’t know about ya’ll, but I’m pretty sure that I only just got used to 2025 being, well, 2025. And I’m also pretty sure that I feel pretty much the same just about every year as one year winds down and another one gets ready to kick off.
Fortunately, the only thing that changes is the light on the land and where the wild ponies might be found on the next adventure. (OK, so that’s not really true, but wouldn’t it be nice?) Pic above from Christmas Day, which already feels about 365 days ago (!).
Thanks for following these amazing mustangs. We’re all grateful for your interest! 🙂
The cottonwood tree is almost as cool as the bald eagle. And that light! It was momentary, which makes the mistake harder to bear.
While shooting, I knew there were little branches in front of the eagle, but I didn’t realize until I saw the images on the computer that one branch literally goes right across the eagle’s eye. Sigh.
Here we go; a little better when the eagle ducked a bit to at least allow a shot of his/her (?) eye not directly crossed by a branch.
The eagle stayed “sticky” as I drove a little closer, using my vehicle as a “hide” to try not to spook the eagle (and all of these are taken with a 600mm lens and cropped).
I’m happy to say that s/he was comfortable enough with my presence in the rolling hide that s/he never flew away while I was there. I drove on and left it to its day doing eagle things.
Pretty cool sighting for the (windy) day after Christmas!
Sunrise in Disappointment Valley highlighting mule deer (I’m so glad to see the bucks back!) in the greasewood and chamisa (rabbitbrush) and willows and cottonwoods along Disappointment Creek, looking toward Spring Creek Basin. It was a drive-by shot, and I couldn’t actually see what I was shooting on my phone’s screen, but the light was so beautiful highlighting the pretty and handsome does and bucks, I literally pointed and pressed the button.
During the hunting seasons (basically starting the first of September and running across or nearly to (and in some cases past) Thanksgiving in Colorado), the wild antlered critters make scarce. I don’t know the numbers, but the traffic and human population of Disappointment Valley increases wildly (sorry) during that time – and not in a good way for the peace of most of us. And when the peace returns, so do the regular sightings.
One little girl is a little more bold than her sisters and aunties. 🙂
*Collective sigh of relief*
These are the first pix I’ve taken since returning to the basin since the snow has (mostly) melted. The roads range from completely dry in sections to stretches of snow-bordered bogginess. Ponies are foraging mostly far from roads, which is perfectly good and fine. Signs are holding up well!
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 