It was actually foggy and spitting a bit of snow in Eleven Mile Canyon, but the wildlife were showing clear signs of the changing seasons.
We were hoping for great blue herons and osprey in the ice cold waters of the South Platte River, as the snow melts from the high peaks and fills the reservoir with clear cold snowmelt.
However, much to our surprise, the first animal we encountered was a young moose, our first moose sighting in the canyon in seven years of watching wildlife here!
It also appears that the mild winter has helped our mule deer population to multiply. We encounterd a herd of about half a dozen just finishing up their morning trip to the water source.
We had to take a short break as they crossed the road in front of us, to begin negotiating the steep mountainside back to their home in the trees high above the river.
Here are a few more of my favorites from our morning with the Rocky Mountain critters!
By the time we were ready to leave the canyon, the skies had cleared enough for us to verify that mama bald eagle is still on the nest!
We also saw a couple of red-tail hawks and one great blue heron fly over, but were unable to capture an image of those inspiring visuals.
Our osprey pair should be enroute from their winter home four thousand miles away in South America. Over the years I have learned that our pair, by a miracle of nature complete their forty day journey and somehow manage to arrive exactly on April 2nd. Osprey are monogamous, and each year they meet their lifelong mate at the nest to hatch eggs and raise a new brood of osprey chicks. Each year one has arrived shortly before the other, and on the second of April I hope to find him perched on a tree high above the river, apparently awaiting the arrival of his mate.
If everything goes right this week, I will make my annual visit to the canyon on that day hoping to capture a good image of their courtship. The pair will get right down to business mating, and after the first couple of days following their arrival, they will be very difficult to find until after the young ones take flight in August. Typical nesting behaviour includes the father perched high above the nest watching for any sign of intruders, which he will drive away in a hurry. I have yet to find a bird or animal with the fortitude to take on an angry osprey!
If you would like to learn where to find our magnificent Colorado wildlife, and how to capture beautiful pictures for yourself, please consider a purchase of my book, Wildlife Photography in the Colorado Rockies. This full size publication is just one of several books I have published, and is filled with dozens of full color glossy pictures of Colorado wildlife, along with valuable tips and tricks for tracking and photographing them! Your purchases of course are a great way to support this site and my work helping to preserve our wild heritage and public forest lands.
Steven W. Krull is a renowned photographer and author who has been photographing and writing of the beauty and wildlife of the Colorado Rocky Mountains for over two decades. Please visit his website at S.W. Krull Imaging to view his work, including thousands of prints for sale, stock images for commercial use, and his library of published books.
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Colorado Nature Photographer / Author | Steven W. Krull 