Wildlife February 2010

[Paul T]

Gee, January lasts a long time in the Northern Hemisphere!! 

Great pics, everyone.  I can't say I've caught up with all of those I've missed over the last few weeks, but the few I've seen were excellent.  I've still only managed to catch up with maybe a dozen topics from while I was too busy to get here....... and my work week starts again tomorrow so I'm definitely never going to catch up. 

[Ragged Robin]

Great shot RR, I can almost smell goat from here!!

It was a powerful smell, Hristo, and a really earthy coat - so I almost walked past it the first time - but Jazzy caught a whiff and the Ibex looked up at her from where it was grazing below in the scrub.... before it wandered off

[ranunculus]

Magnificent images of a beautiful creature, Robin.

[Ragged Robin]

Cliff, so good to share these images with everyone..... I seem to have been just in the right place at the right time - with my camera  

I also saw this beautiful Chamois  

(The last image is processed to show the face more clearly as the lighting was such high contrast)

[Paul T]

That really is a "pretty" creature isn't it.  Very feminine looking.

[Ragged Robin]

Paul, although both sexes have curved horns I do think this is a female because it is 'pretty' (not heavily built) but I was surprised to see it on it's own...maybe others were close by?

This is a link to Alpine Chamois sparring on the mountainside - they are very agile:

http://www.arkive.org/chamois/rupicapra-rupicapra/video-ru12.html

[Maggi Young]

Paul T: thanks for the note.... yes, it is high time this thread turned to the correct month!




Robin: Charming shots of the alpine critters.... I'm astonhished that as you are out walking with Jazzy they do not make off well before you get within sight of them.

[Paul T]

Maggi,

 

You could have just changed it to "Early 2010" or something like that, and left it as one topic. 

See what happens when I'm absent?  Everything goes to pot. 

 

[Maggi Young]

Maggi,

 

You could have just changed it to "Early 2010" or something like that, and left it as one topic.  

See what happens when I'm absent?  Everything goes to pot.  

 

I know.... you need to keep dropping in, if only briefly, to hold the whole jing-bang together!  
M

[Ragged Robin]

Robin: Charming shots of the alpine critters.... I'm astonhished that as you are out walking with Jazzy they do not make off well before you get within sight of them.

Maggi, shadows in the forest - slow moving and quiet as can be - both of us 

[Gail]

Maggi, shadows in the forest - slow moving and quiet as can be - both of us 

Sounds very poetic - shadows in the forest, have a lovely picture in my mine of the two of you but can we have a real picture of Jazzy?
Do you know Robert Frost's poem Two look at two?

[Maggi Young]

Can't resist pointing you to these two photos of  Jazzy, Gail........
http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3289.msg84654#msg84654
http://www.srgc.org.uk/smf/index.php?topic=3495.270

[Gail]

Thanks - she is lovely!  We lost our Newfoundland over a year ago and I'm feeling dog deprived!

[Maggi Young]

Gail, my deep sympathy to you, we've been dogless and it is awful. How pleased we are now to have Lily the westie ( starring in many bulb logs and most of Ian's Talks!)


Thanks for bringing up the Frost poem, here it is.....


Two Look at Two 




  Love and forgetting might have carried them
A little further up the mountain side
With night so near, but not much further up.
They must have halted soon in any case
With thoughts of a path back, how rough it was
With rock and washout, and unsafe in darkness;
When they were halted by a tumbled wall
With barbed-wire binding. They stood facing this,
Spending what onward impulse they still had
In One last look the way they must not go,
On up the failing path, where, if a stone
Or earthslide moved at night, it moved itself;
No footstep moved it. 'This is all,' they sighed,
Good-night to woods.' But not so; there was more.
A doe from round a spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall, as near the wall as they.
She saw them in their field, they her in hers.
The difficulty of seeing what stood still,
Like some up-ended boulder split in two,
Was in her clouded eyes; they saw no fear there.
She seemed to think that two thus they were safe.
Then, as if they were something that, though strange,
She could not trouble her mind with too long,
She sighed and passed unscared along the wall.
'This, then, is all. What more is there to ask?'
But no, not yet. A snort to bid them wait.
A buck from round the spruce stood looking at them
Across the wall as near the wall as they.
This was an antlered buck of lusty nostril,
Not the same doe come back into her place.
He viewed them quizzically with jerks of head,
As if to ask, 'Why don't you make some motion?
Or give some sign of life? Because you can't.
I doubt if you're as living as you look."
Thus till he had them almost feeling dared
To stretch a proffering hand -- and a spell-breaking.
Then he too passed unscared along the wall.
Two had seen two, whichever side you spoke from.
'This must be all.' It was all. Still they stood,
A great wave from it going over them,
As if the earth in one unlooked-for favour
Had made them certain earth returned their love.



Robert Frost 

[Ragged Robin]

Gail & Maggi, I'm speechless and overwhelmed for two reasons: firstly that Gail has found some solace in our two by two encounters in the forest here after the great loss of her Newfoundland and secondly how Frost's poem 'Two look at Two', posted by Maggi, encapsulates the essence of the moment and the meaning flowing between Man and Nature so perfectly.  Each walk is as our last as Jazzy is heading for 15 years and it heightens the experience enormously to be able to share these wild discoveries.