Success!  We caught a fox with last night's traps.  What a great experience to watch wildlife biologists at work.  Such gentleness and care, and a quick job with the process of collaring, inserting microchip, bloodwork for DNA and other testing, age, and weight checks.  After all that excitement, we collected the remaining empty traps and headed back to unload the bait.  I spent most of the day organizing and processing photographs, and talking with park staff.  In the evening I set out for Cedar Pass hoping to catch some shots of the bighorn sheep that hang out around there, and also to watch the sunset.

Another amazing sunrise, this time over the badlands near the Door/Window area of the park.

Sharptail grouse perched on the line.

Approaching moon set

Loading empty traps

Preparing for running tests on the fox

A very healthy female swift fox

Biologists gently coaxing her out of the cage

Releasing back to the wild

She stopped and paused to look back at us several times

Moving on to check the other traps

One contained a displeased skunk - quite the trick to release it without getting sprayed

Cedar Pass area in the evening.

Bighorn ram

An older ram

A group of five males

Checking things out

Sunset over badlands, notice the window in the buttes

Sunset from near the visitors center

Moonrise - super grainy since I had no tripod and had to use a high ISO