Happy birthday to my own strong, fearless, alpha-mare mom, Nancy!
I love you, Mom! 🙂
Fall gloriana
28 10 2025Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : Colorado, Disappointment Valley, La Sal Mountains, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Utah
Born handsome
27 10 2025
Just Flash. … Lookin’ handsome as always in the golden light of an autumn sunset.
Comments : 4 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Shady girl
26 10 2025
Gaia takes advantage of some evening shade while grazing down the other side of a ridge from where the band grazed their way up and over.
Comments : 4 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
The awesomeness of water
25 10 2025We got more rain Thursday. 🙂
Buckeye and his band knew exactly where to find relatively fresh water trickling down this rock arroyo, where it fills pools and puddles and tinajas along the way. I LOVE seeing the horses find new water. It doesn’t last long, but the fact that it’s there is, really, just cool.
The perspective is weird, but this is looking DOWN the rock arroyo. The bright part is the reflection of clouds in the water of a tinaja in the rock.
This looks like a bigger scene than it actually is. It’s actually only a couple of feet from the little “waterfall” – which is only maybe 6 or 8 inches tall? – to where I’m holding my phone along the little rock wall on the left. Is it cool or what?! (It looked a lot cooler in reality; it loses something in translation to still image.)
This twin-trunk cottonwood is downstream from the rock arroyo. I wonder how far under the soil surface is that bedrock? Not far downstream is another cottonwood, still very green-leaved!
It doesn’t look it, but all that ground is very nicely damp to downright muddy.
Another gorgeous post-rain day in Spring Creek Basin. 🙂
Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : McKenna Peak, Rain, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte, Water
Fallin’ for the view
24 10 2025
It really is that divinely beautiful right now. 🙂
Top to bottom: Temple. Madison. Temple photobombing Madison. 🙂
Mustangs in Spring Creek Basin, which is part of Disappointment Valley but does NOT include Disappointment Creek, along which you can see the glowing cottonwoods snaking across the distant landscape, headed west.
(Disappointment Creek currently is as dry (well, muddy, as I type this during intermittent rain waves) as Spring Creek … maybe with a few more puddles along its considerably longer length. But it generally runs from … February? Ish? Into July if we’re lucky. That’s enough water to (mostly) support the cottonwoods along most of its length. Spring Creek runs only when there’s a major rain event. We have a couple of cottonwood trees in Spring Creek Basin (I think I can count them on one hand and have fingers left over), but they’re in higher drainages that may not get more flow (?) but might get more rainfall. The cottonwoods seen in the distance in the above images are along Disappointment Creek outside/west of Spring Creek Basin.)
Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : Colorado, Cottonwood trees, Disappointment Creek, Disappointment Valley, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Ravin’ ravens!
23 10 2025
I thought maybe a group of ravens was called a “cacophony” (if you know ravens, you know why I might have thought that). But no. A group of ravens is called an *unkindness*. How unkind is that?
Ravens actually are quite intelligent and very social. This website explains the early misunderstanding about their behavior that led to that term. They can also be called a “conspiracy” of ravens, a “treachery” of ravens and – perhaps my favorite, just because I’m a fan of alliteration – a “rave” of ravens! Also (boringly), a flock.
While the two pictured were engaged in an aerial disagreement (?!) across a large swath of ridge and sky, a third followed … maybe ready to console the loser or congratulate the winner? (There’s my own misunderstanding, shining through!) In any case, I was kinda stoked to see the above pic show up on my computer monitor. And very glad to get the lower raven’s wingtip juuuuuust within the frame of the original image (I did crop out a length of sky above them).
Comments : 12 Comments »
Categories : Raven, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Wild birds
Heading down to water
22 10 2025
Tenaz and Skywalker make their way down a hill at sunset to one of Spring Creek Basin’s water catchments, now holding plenty of water after the rains a week ago.
Comments : 6 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Watcher
21 10 2025
Do you ever get that feeling like you’re being watched?
In the best possible way, of course! 🙂
I was sitting way up high on a hill in the northwestern part of the basin, after a huffin’-and-puffin’ kind of climb, and I was looking out at the view when I happened to look straight to my right to see a pretty little face looking at me from under the cover (or so she thought) of trees. Ha!
Pretty Rowan in Buckeye’s band is a curious girl!
We are having some absolutely gorgeous weather. It’s mostly dry again, though I keep finding little pools in arroyos and canyons and other little places of still-damp ground. The mustangs are growing their winter coats and starting to look fuzzy. My favorite time of year.
Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Admiring
20 10 2025
Not a bad view. 🙂
Comments : 7 Comments »
Categories : McKenna Peak, Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs, Temple Butte
The blingy side
19 10 2025
Cassidy Rain remains morally opposed to posing for marvelous mustang portraits … but now and then, I “catch” her looking gorgeous (as she always does, willingly or not)!
Comments : 8 Comments »
Categories : Spring Creek Basin Herd Management Area, Spring Creek Basin mustangs
Spring Creek Basin Mustangs 