A little “family” of pronghorns …
… amid a bigger group! And these weren’t all of them. After the rains, they have plenty of roadside puddles (some of them decently large!) to drink from without ranging too far!
Closest critters
13 10 2025Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : Pronghorn, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Wildlife
Pronghorn moon
10 07 2025
This handsome fellow is not the same handsome fellow from a couple of posts ago. He was near a small water source, and I happened upon him as he was walking away. Above, I *think* his attention was caught by a small band of mustangs away south and lower. He ended up turning all the way around to look at them, then watched them intently for several minutes before returning to his path away to nibble and browse.
A couple of hours later, this. 🙂
Hot, hot, hot. The temp hit 100 degrees in Spring Creek Basin yesterday. It’s not unusual as a summertime temp … but it’s still awfully miserable. There was some relief in the form of sunshine-blocking clouds, but not a drop of moisture did they produce.
By the time the moon rose, it was actually pleasant (if you don’t mention the gnats), and some little bird was singing its little heart out with a full medley of melody. I don’t know what it was, but it was a lovely serenade! 🙂
Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : Colorado, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Moon, Pronghorn, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Temple Butte
On alert
8 07 2025
The pronghorn buck Chipeta and the other mustangs were very interested in. Here, he’s literally right at the rimrock’s edge (a band of rimrock cliffs forms most of Spring Creek Basin’s western boundary). I spotted him first, from the far side of a little hump of ground. Then he spotted me and decided that the mustangs must be warned of the “stranger” in their midst! Fortunately, though I was a stranger to him, I am not a stranger to *them*.
Comments : 10 Comments »
Categories : Disappointment Valley, Pronghorn, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area
One wildling on the Fourth
4 07 2025
Happy actual Fourth of July (blame WordPress for the recent posting weirdness) from wild, wide-open, freedom-embracing Spring Creek Basin. 🙂
Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : Pronghorn, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Wildlife
Speedies
3 06 2025
This handsome pronghorn buck and his ladies have been in and around Spring Creek Basin lately. I haven’t seen any fawns yet, but they’re either hidden out of sight, or they’re almost ready to make their entrance to the world!
Comments : 15 Comments »
Categories : Pronghorn, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Wildlife
January, and life is easy
27 01 2025
While the rest of Colorado (yes, we’re actually in Colorado) is complaining about their snow and ice and vehicle wrecks (OK, that part is never good), we’re dusty damn dry here in the southwestern corner of the state. The pronghorns maybe don’t mind the lack of snow; it’s easier to move, and they don’t have to paw under the snow for their food. Only we who look ahead are scared about the coming summer. There’s nothing we can do about it, for better or worse, of course, but we humans love to complain about the future. 🙂
This is the same group of 14 pronghorns that have made themselves right at home in the western part of Spring Creek Basin lately. They were very calm about me moving slowly past them, stopping a few times to take some pix as I went.
That’s the north rim of Spring Creek canyon in the background. It’s hard to tell, but I’m on the south side, facing north.
The temp hit at least 51F yesterday. As desperate as we are for snow, I have to say that temp felt awfully nice after several days of frigid cold (which, yes, is normal in January in Colorado!).
Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : Pronghorn, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek canyon
Arrival of the front
19 01 2025
The cold front announced its arrival in Disappointment Valley yesterday morning with wind and dramatic skies. Utah’s La Sal Mountains were blocked from sight by a snow squall in/over western Disappointment Valley most of the afternoon.
I drove into Spring Creek Basin briefly, just in time to see a little snow squall rolling from north to south across the eastern ridges of the basin. In contrast to the other day, when the snow blazed a trail across the basin, yesterday, the snow was all around but never atop us.
Horses were visible in the distance, but I decided that this would be more of a scenery day.
On my way out of the basin, I happened upon the group of about 15 pronghorns that have been hanging around together lately. By the time I saw them, stopped, got the camera out of my pack and aimed, at least half of them had dropped off their little ridge.
Away out yonder in those breaks and canyons is the Dolores River.
From back on the Disappointment Road, another isolated little squall was dropping snow along Horse Park, a narrow little valley between Spring Creek Basin and beyond. You can recognize part of the far ridge as the same one in the background of the Maiku pic a couple of posts ago. The rimrocks at the bottom, semi-foreground are the western boundary of Spring Creek Basin.
And just a little south of the previous pic, the squall was still moving south over Temple Butte. In the near foreground are cottonwoods and tamarisk along Disappointment Creek.
This is yet farther south (from my vantage point, I’m looking sort of southeast-ish). While I was trying to get the snow over the very far (and much higher elevation) ridges, a golden eagle was flying over the scene. See it above the cottonwood at left?
We’ll close with another, tighter view across Disappointment Creek and Spring Creek Basin. You can see the basin’s western rimrocks, Flat Top, Round Top, submarine ridge, McKenna Peak and Temple Butte – snow beyond.
Gosh, I love this place. 🙂
Wherever you are, I hope you’re warm these next few days!
Comments : 2 Comments »
Categories : Disappointment Creek, Disappointment Valley, McKenna Peak, Pronghorn, Snow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Temple Butte
Snow line
14 01 2025
Never have I thought it would be cool to see the basin from the perspective of above, via a drone, as much as yesterday. The craziest snow squall I may ever have seen went from southeast to northwest across the middle-ish and western parts of Spring Creek Basin and across the areas immediately southwest, west and northwest of the basin (and I can’t say how far north/northwest it continued). No snow from about Disappointment Road west, and none from just above the corrals (along the road on the basin side in the southwestish area of the basin) on up-valley.
It would have been amazing to see the actual line of snow-no-snow from the air, looking straight down.
The above pic with the pronghorns, in the western part of the basin looking northeastish, illustrates it fairly well. Usually if anywhere gets snow, it’s that eastern side of higher-elevation ridges, not NOT that side AND the lower/interior/western part of the basin.
Morning chores prevented me from getting out until the snow had stopped and the sun was shining through the clearing clouds, but this snow DID make the ground damp – wonderfully so.
Not in the forecast (what is happening with the poor forecasts lately?!), but this snow was very welcome!
Comments : 9 Comments »
Categories : Pronghorn, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area
Buff and blendy
12 12 2024
Recently, shortly after I entered Spring Creek Basin, I saw a small group of mule deer in the very same vicinity as a large group of pronghorns. Because many of the pronghorns were napping in the lovely sunshine, I passed them, then walked back down a short distance to photograph them, hoping that was enough to not rouse them.
The deer were on their own mission and went over the edge of the hill and out of sight before I could get them all in the same frame, but the pronghorns were slow to worry (usually, they’re super wary).
Eventually they got up and started to follow the direction of the deer. I was happy to see how many fawns there appeared to be. Even for the fastest land mammals in North America, survival of the youngest is not assured. (They are not hunted in this part of Colorado; there simply aren’t enough of them. I called this a “big group,” but there were only about 15. I think there may be no more than around 25, maybe 30 (??), in the whole valley.)
Their famous speed wasn’t on display as they ambled (if a pronghorn can ever be said to amble!) off the hill following the deer. It was cool to see them, and the deer, enjoying a lovely, sunshiney day in the basin, as I was!
Comments : 10 Comments »
Categories : Disappointment Valley, Pronghorn, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Wildlife
Season’s first snow
1 11 2024
So THIS happened Wednesday! On top of the rain mud, the snow made conditions, um, muddIER. 🙂
These lovelies weren’t the only ones.
But wait! There’s more!
How many do you count? 🙂
As it turned out, though I spent a couple of hours in the basin – enough time for most of the snow (1 to 3 inches, depending on location) to melt! – I saw only ONE band of mustangs. They were farther than I wanted to hike in the snow and mud, so I looked in the far corners for another, closer band – without success. By the time I went back to the first band, they’d decided (anthropomorphism alert) they didn’t want to be leftovers and had disappeared. 🙂
I was just happy to see the snow and the mud and the one band and all the pronghorns (which have been very visible lately, though mostly a bit lower). We’re going to have mud for a while – especially with more rain/snow due Sunday!
Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : Pronghorn, Snow, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 