Come summer, school's out and the Parc is busy. Not too crowded, but we liked the feeling that we had it almost to ourselves in the past....
The evening before our mid July visit had seen a heavy wind and rain storm come through. The internal roads were covered with leaves. The streams, and ponds were full, many with muddy water.
The beaver pond was overflowing, the geese were swimming through the fast growing waterlily plants.
With the antlers fully grown in, but still covered with velvet, the animals seemed to be parading to show off their prized possessions to us. (Although they might just have been looking for carrots🙄)
The caribou wasn't so keen to show off their antlers, which must be the widest/tallest of all.
Meanwhile poor Bernard*, one of the elk, who had lost the back half of his antlers presumably in a "fight" with a tree a month ago, is looking rather embarrassed with what is left of his antlers.
*I didn't know some of the elk had names...
The coyotes are looking at home, back in their recently enlarged enclosure.
A number of very young black wolf cubs were out.
Two were "fighting" with their teeth filled jaws.
I can atest to their teeth being needle sharp at that age as a "number" of years ago I visited a very small zoo that allowed me to play with a wolf cub. The cub enjoyed chewing on my ear.
One of the cubs looked like it was being sent back to the den, either for a nap, or going to his room for being bad(?)
A fallow deer fawn and its mom enjoyed a quiet moment together.
The bison and their calves had found some nice fresh grass and other green growth to munch on.
Was this the same female deer who enjoyed some of our 60 pounds of carrots from our last visit? (see June Photostory) She certainly acted as though she knew us...
A new addition to the Parc are three Przewalski horses. The Parc is participating in a breeding program for the horses which are an endangered species. They are from Central Asia and became extinct in the wild. A few have been re-introduced to their homeland. They are the only true wild horses remaining.
Most of the Rocky Mountain goats have lost their winter coats
Only one black bear was in sight, but the cinnamon bear enclosure produced 4 or 5 bears.
The great blue heron who in May (first picture) took over the nesting platform intended for an osprey seemed to be sitting on eggs.
