This isn’t the first mountain bluebird I’ve seen, and it won’t be the last; there are sometimes great flocks of them winging and zipping and darting around the region right now. It WAS the first to settle semi close enough for me to “focus” on it (please forgive the lack of focus) and click the shutter so I could share his handsomeness with all of you. Winter may not have favored us this year, but spring is inexorably on its way.
Photographed with still-winterized greasewood between us, I’m about to get the one-ear treatment from Winona, too, as she considers her options for moseying on or staying where she is. She eventually moseyed on, giving me the head shake in passing. I’ll have a pic of that in a future post.
If it seems as though most of the mustangs are napping in recent pix, you’d be right. That wind. … It’s exhausting. Maiku watched his pals check out a water source, but it wasn’t very appealing, and they walked on to find a better drinking spot.
Oh my gracious, isn’t she the loveliest!?
I’m glad she’s still fuzzy; maybe there’s still hope for us to get some more winter this winter.
His band was grazing up the hill to the (my) left (his right). I don’t know what held the interest of that one wayward ear. My interest, of course, was all on handsome Sundance and the magnificent background of his home world.
Now THAT is how you roll in the post-snow mud!
Piedra sets the bar high for all rollers. 🙂
Well, will you look at that!
Please pardon my pessimism and enjoy my gratitude that Mother Nature came through for Disappointment Valley and Spring Creek Basin (specifically). We got 2.5 inches (or more or less, depending on actual location) of the good, wet, white stuff Saturday night into Sunday morning!
It took a bit longer to melt this time than the half-inch we got last time, but by mid-afternoon, this, too, was reduced to ground-quenching mud. And that was perfectly fine. The wind continued … not as awfully as the day before but enough that it still tries to leach that desperately-needed moisture.
Just enough for Maia to roll over and be semi-immersed.
With any hope, our mud quantity will increase this morning.
The topography of the land where Buckeye and his band were grazing the other day was always slightly downhill of where I needed to be to get that nice background of rimrocks and La Sal Mountains. So it was hard to get it all within the frame of my long lens. But of course I had to try. 🙂
Buckeye did his best to accommodate my photographer’s request.
We have another chance of snow/rain in our Sunday forecast. It’s not a huge chance, but we need it hugely.
The temperature was in the balmy 50s (or maybe it was 60), but still Rowan felt the need to seek shade on a sunny Leap Day. It was a beautiful day for a nap with friends, and all of hers agreed.
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 