Group items matching

in title, tags, annotations or url

First thing we seen last Saturday is this herd of Elk. They were pretty close to our little town! They were laying down in this farmers field. But when they noticed someone giving them attention they started getting up and getting nervous. The morning was very nasty weather wise. Snow was falling, it was foggy and I really did not want to see the Elk running in this weather. These all look like bulls. These Elk we have here are very..... shy? Paranoid? In the field they had nothing to hide behind.

While deep in the Ochoco Mountains we ran across a nice flowing creek. I love running water and just had to stop!! Upon inspection of where we were it was obvious this spot had been used as a hunting camp. The legs of the elk and the "meat hangers" (we laughed for I am sure there is a real name for them ha) , that were nailed to the trees. The feathers laying around looked as if maybe a turkey was in the mix with the elk? Even a spot for a bathroom. Gave us this impression. Guy wondered further down the creek then I for things happen to catch my eye. So I was wondering around on my own taking shots of the ice that was found where the water was not running fast. As I was doing my thing I heard some racket that was obviously coming from the trees and from birds. As you can imagine wild creatures do not just sit still so one can snap off photographs, so off I went to get this loud birds photographs! There were at least 3 of these birds, however non of them were all that impressed with any of us there! From the information I gathered of this bird, these must of been truly wild Gray Jays!! Not yet ingrained with human presents. I first thought this was a nutcracker. We have many of those around so it seams. Same family as these Gray Jays, but so is the steller's jay,blue jay and the western scrub jay , the crows, the ravens there is a lot of species in the Corvidae family!! From the sub species of the Gray Jay and getting these photographs in the Ochoco mountains this determined these to be the Bicolored Gray Jay. One thing all these birds have in common is, they are very smart!! Smarter then humans give them credit for! Over the Cascade Mountains there is yet another sub species of the Gray Jay over there with different needs and habits. That Gray Jay does not like snow, the ones here better like snow! Like all birds of the Corvidae family, they are pretty much scavengers, however it appears all the species of the Gray Jay have different food s

Never photographing these before. I was quite happy to find these high up in the Ochoco Mountains of Oregon. We found a area of wildflowers blooming and stopping to photograph all the wildflowers in that spot, then thought we should head up to the higher elevation and did so on a narrow dirt road until we came to melting snow. This is where these were blooming along with some other wildflowers. Noticing a lot of elk and it looked like the horses use the area as a resting place. Wild horses in the Ochoco Mountains is a common thing. Such impressive flowers!