Glacier: Wildlife

We did pretty darn well with the wildlife in Glacier. The one thing we did not see is bears. But we saw really everything else a hiker could hope for. First, near Avalanche Creek, the noble deer. (Okay, bit of a skinny deer.)

Maybe a bumblebee should not count as wildlife? but on this pretty flower, we could not resist.

Up in the alpine areas near Logan Pass, there were some terrific marmots. Aaron thought he saw a pika as well, but that is unconfirmed.

We had a whole thing about ground squirrels vs. chipmunks: Sue thought we were seeing a lot of chipmunks, and Dale felt they were ground squirrels. We learned that ground squirrel is a broad category that includes chipmunks, and a chipmunk is only a chipmunk if it has stripes that go all the way to its nose. How about that? This, then, is a ground squirrel.

But this is a chipmunk.

The most satisfying sightings were mountain goats, icons of the park and wonderfully plentiful on our hikes.

This hillside had a whole herd, over a dozen goats of various ages and stages, full of behaviors. One guy was scraping at the rocks with his horns and making little mini-avalanches for no apparent reason.

We were graced with a more distant sighting of a bighorn sheep.

And last but not least, a roadside moose, awfully close. Now that I know the rules I would say that we should not have parked so close. It's easy to think of the animals as if the space beyond the road is their cage, like they're at a zoo, but of course that's not the case, and close human encounters are bad for them and for us.

As always, credit to Dale for the wonderful photography. Aaron, meanwhile, kept a list of all the animals that he or we saw... the question marks are for ones that he is not sure he saw.

Deer
Eagles
Skunk (dead)
Tiny snake
Fish (dead)
Sculpin
2 shrimp (dead)
21 mountain goats
6 marmots
1,000,000 ground squirrels
3 chipmunks
2 pika?
Beaver?
Magpies
2 rabbits
Camp robber
Merganser duck
(infinity) cows/cattle
1 bull
1 grouse
1 mini marmot
1 moose
6 crows
(infinity)^200 human things