It's a zoo out there.

As I mentioned earlier in the blog, we saw a large number of (large) animals on our drive up. We saw a moose-a-day for the first ten days we were here, and the would-be dumpster diving black bear I described in a previous post. The wildlife sightings have since dropped off considerably, primarily a result of the dense foliage that now creates an obscuring green wall along both sides Eagle River Road. We haven't seen a moose in two weeks.

But we have been starting to see some less common animals.
On Monday I returned to Mt. Baldy (see Tellyouwhhhut, below). As I neared the top, I noticed what I thought was a juvenile bald eagle circling some prey on the mountainside below. I stopped my walk to watch as it disappeared around a ledge and circled back in my direction. It took three or four circles for me to recognize that the bird was, in fact, circling me. I snapped a picture and high-tailed it out of the area. It turns out that the bird was an adult golden eagle (which have similar coloring to juvenile bald eagles) and that it was likely guarding a nest.

The next day, as Steve and I drove to Ben's yurt after a day at Eklutna Lake, Steve motioned towards a brown something we could see lumbering across the road up ahead. It seemed too big to be a dog and too hefty to be a moose. We slowed down and were thrilled to see* our first grizzly bear walking, then running clumsily, along the side of the road and eventually back into the woods. (*Note to my mom: from the car. We were in the car. Please don't worry.)
Getting to see a brown bear is a rarity around here - we're counting ourselves quite lucky.

Part three of our recent animalpalooza came yesterday evening as we were closing up the nature center for the day. Steve rushed back inside and excitedly called me out to the parking lot where he'd seen a porcupine a minute earlier. Sure enough, the porcupine was just hanging out, nibbling contentedly on something it was finding in the dirt of our overflow parking lot. Each time a car drove by, the porcupine (which, I now know, is quite different from a hedgehog) would show its disapproval by splaying a portion of its quills so that it appeared to be wearing a prickly tutu.
We watched for about 15 minutes until a neighbor pulled into the lot to his mailbox and the porcupine scurried off into the brush.


Two more resident volunteers arrived yesterday and Steve and I have gone from feeling like the young whipper-snapper volunteers to the old-farts of the crowd. The two new kids are both students and Molly, who has been here nearly two weeks, just graduated from college in May. One of the newest arrivals is from Everett.