Badlands National Park Day 11

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


Badlands National Park Day 10

I first awoke at 3:30 this morning to head out to photograph the lunar eclipse, but when I saw the cloud cover and lack of visible moon, opted instead for one more hour of sleep.  I met up with the wildlife biologists early to drive out and check the swift fox traps that were set last night.  Sadly, no luck on foxes, but there was yet another gorgeous sunrise to watch, as well as the moon set.  In the evening, we baited and set more traps, which afforded some nice sunset and moon rise views.  Pretty great to see both the sun and moon rise and set in one day.

Following the telemetry truck

Sunrise

Driving into the sunrise

The setting moon

There were a few bighorn sheep by the road in the evening

Trotting away from the road

Traps set and ready for the night

Biologists setting a trap

Sunset

Moon rise