Celebrating the first real day of Spring at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve
The weather forecast for yesterday called for sunshine and a high of 12°C/54°F. It had been about 7 months since we’d seen a day like that, so this was a day to get outside! I asked Cathy if she’d like to join me at the Yukon Wildlife Preserve and she immediately said yes.
We renewed our annual passes which were due to expire in a couple of weeks, said good-bye to poor Bella and Tucker ( 🙁 ) and headed west. While I planned to walk the 5-km loop, Cathy would take the bus for 2/3 of it and we’d meet at the upper end of the moose pasture.
We had expected the place to be busy and were a bit worried that Cathy might not get on the bus, but there were few people and Cathy was the first person to ask for the bus. I started walking, and the bus would leave in about half an hour.
The route through the 350-acre preserve is a figure-8, and I always start with the bison. The entire property is about 700 acres, but only half is developed as the wildlife preserve. I started bringing tour groups here in 1990 – it’s a very different place than it was then, and there were some rough times, but this is now a facility Yukoners can be proud of, with dedicated staff taking extremely good care of all the animals.
From the viewing platform, the bison were all facing the wrong direction, so I walked far past it and shot back through the fence with the 100-400mm lens on the big Canon 7D at 400. While the small Canon SX740 has more than double the focal length (960mm equivalent), it gets easily confused with things like fences and branches and often chooses the wrong thing to focus on. In the next photo, the fence wire is so out of focus it’s barely visible.
The mule deer were all in hiding up in the forest, so the next viewing was of the elk. There were a few Arctic ground squirrels living the good life at the elk feeding station 🙂
Most of the elk were quite a distance away but as I arrived many of them started walking towards the feeding station.
Another view of the elk area showing the beautiful mountains to the southwest of the preserve.
I was extremely pleased to find the young moose named Atlin browsing willows along the fence line. His light-coloured coat is gorgeous!
What a perfect day to be out here. This is looking north from the junction of the figure-8, with the thinhorn sheep area on the left and the moose area on the right.
A musk ox calf had just been born a couple of hours before we arrived (the first baby of the year) and I was of course hoping to get a glimpse but they were at the far end of the pasture, and the combination of distance, snow piles and backlighting made that impossible. I met a staff member there, though, who had gotten a decent photo from a staff-only area, and I chatted with her for a bit.
This Arctic ground squirrel was okay with getting his photo taken on the road running by the musk ox area.
Just past the ground squirrel, I found a Milbert’s tortoiseshell butterfly (Aglais milberti), and got several photos. These were my first good photos of that species, so I was particularly pleased with that encounter.
There are several trees that look like they exploded, all at the same height from the ground – frost expansion in deep cold? This happened many years ago, but the trees have all survived.
In a fairly new elk area, the trees have had protective barriers built around them so the elk can’t eat the bark or rub their antlers on them and kill them.
The mountain goats weren’t in the places I normally expect them, but I found them in a patch of bare ground. Many of the animals at the preserve not only don’t mind humans, they seem to enjoy us, and the percentage of goats like that seems to be particularly high.
I didn’t see any caribou in their area, but as I walking along I heard a little snort, and it was a caribou laying among the trees very well hidden. Did she snort so I’d come over and talk to her for a minute? 🙂
This is the upper mountain goat viewing platform, often a good place to see them on the cliffs.
With nobody around, the upper caribou viewing platform was a good place to shoot a couple of selfies. A few days ago I was looking for a photo of myself with a camera, and I couldn’t find any, so these were shot for that reason. I set up the tripod and set the little Canon on it to take the shots.
Cathy’s bus passed me just before we reached the moose viewing platform – almost perfect timing. She had been the only person on the bus, and while I had a great walk, she had absorbed a whole lot of great information from the very knowledgable driver/guide.
The bison were now gathered at the watering station right beside the fence and provided particularly good photo ops.
I had been surprised to not see any sheep by the feeding station where they can always be found, but as we walked along, several of them came down from the hill, walking towards that feeding station.
This is the map of the walk at Strava – 5.77 km in 2 hours, 26 minutes (of which I was moving for 1 hour, 28 minutes). It was an excellent day, with Cathy and I both getting the amount of walking we wanted. For me the entire day totalled almost 14,000 steps.
That night, sitting in the hot tub, the moon was incredibly clear so when I came in I decided to see what the little Canon could do with it. This image isn’t cropped – this is using the full 960mm zoom. I’m very impressed. The moon was 72% full.
I’m still testing to find a blog size that will work for our Newfoundland trip. This one, with 26 photos, has taken 2 hours and 40 minutes to create – I think that will work 🙂
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