Elk Swim Club

Tadpole-Frog-Mania

Every year thousands of tadpoles are born in our pond. It's quite amazing. The result is tiny, thumb-sized frogs all over the place in late summer. But in all the years of seeing them, there was never another day like this one when they all emerged from the pond in unison! Make some room!

Ducks say, "What's up?"

Ducks float on in to see what's happening with the cool crowd of elk at the pond. You can see one elk notice them for a moment, but she is unimpressed.

The Most Unusual

Here are some clips of the most unusual animals we've captured on (digital) film.  Usually we see elk, deer, bears, bobcats, raccoons, coyotes, rabbits, owls and frogs. All of the animals in this compilation have barely been seen in the 5 years we've had trail cameras.  Some have only been seen once or twice. I don't know what all the bird species are nor do I know what all the weasel and other small mammals are, but maybe you do.

No Roughhousing in the Pond!

 

Heron in Flight

Heron from last month at the pond - shaking out its feathers and taking flight.  Lucky camera timing to get such a good view of her in action.

Bear-a-palooza

Several bears visited and played in the pond over a two day period a couple of days ago.  There were 5 different visits in all.  From what I can tell, three of the visits were two bears and two visits had three bears.  Here is a compilation of clips from their good times.

Great Horned Owl

This is (I think - feel free to correct me) a Great Horned Owl. We only see this kind approx once a year.  99% of the owls we see here are Barred Owls.  This is from a week ago and we haven't seen her again, so she must not have found the pond to her liking and probably only gave us one Hoot on OwlYelp.

Thar Be Tadpoles!

This is a time-lapse at 30x speed.  So it represents about a half hour at the edge of the pond. What's amazing, is that due to the lighting, logs, bed of leaves and other tricks of the eye, it is very hard to currently see any tadpoles in the pond.  I saw a few hanging near the edge, under a big log, so I stuck the GoPro in the pond. This is the video I got.  There are gazillions (I counted).

There are many other creatures in the video that are not frog or newt tadpoles - I don't know what they are.  Especially weird is the Scorpion-esque creature creepily floating around at the 20 second mark.  Also, near the end you can see two frogs floating around checking out the kids.

Bear Swimming Time Lapse

This is a time-lapse video of a bear having fun in the pond for about 13 minutes (you can see the time on the bottom).  The entire video represents about 20 mins of elapsed time.  Having a time-lapse camera aimed at the pond helps see some animals that the trail cameras miss.  Either because the animals are too far away to activate them or some other tech issue, sometimes the motion detection fails.  So I have a camera that takes a snapshot of the pond every 10 seconds all day just to catch the things the other cameras miss. 

No Goldilocks

This is one of only a handful of times that three bears are seen at the same time on a video. It seems like the two on the logs are about to throw down when the third comes running in to take their attention. The third one also seems to be a teenager as she is smaller and quicker than the other two.

Magical Heron

Okay, the heron isn't magical, but the scene sure is.  Watching her look for food as the rain plops into the pond is soothing - but only because we didn't see her catch and gulp anything - that would've been drastically less soothing!

Elk Pond Party

Several elk hang out at the pond - one gets a little too close to the camera.  I particularly like the reflections of the elk on the far side of the pond.

Just Missed!

Back when the pond was dry (this is the usual bottom of it) - a scruffy coyote scoots off to the left just one second before a bobcat appears on the right.  Of course, there was no video framing out there in nature, so I'm sure they were hyper aware of each other.  Interestingly, on other videos I've seen deer chase coyotes and bobcats chase deer - but also, deer chase bobcats.  It's sort of a rock, scissors, paper thing.

Elky McBitey

At the pond, this elk seems to be threatening her buddy with "Death by a thousand small bites" - meanwhile, two ducks look on wondering what all the ruckus is about.

Glamorous Owl

This owl poses for a glamour shot while checking out her surroundings for food and potential enemies.  Luckily, her head goes about 270 degrees around.

Lucky Camera Save and an Unusual Duck

This video is from when the water in the pond was rapidly rising in Feb. Luckily, I retrieved this camera right before the pond drowned it - as the water rose many more feet just after this. 

The duck was very unusual (to me), so I looked it up and the official name of it is "Cool-Ass Duck". Which is appropriate.

A Bobcat visits the Pond

There have (sadly) been less bobcats in the last few months.  I think it has something to do with the unusual snow that sat frozen around all of our yard for almost all of February and much of March.  I think the bobcats went elsewhere to find an easier place to live and look for food.  Of course, if that is the case, it was great news for our bunnies, mice and other bobcat prey!  Just this week, we've had a few more sightings of bobcats - here's one by the pond (which is almost completely dried up for the summer).

Unknown Weasel Variety!

Marten?  Fisher?  Ermine?  Weasel?  Mink?

This is only the 3rd or 4th time we've seen one of these in the last 5 years or so!!!

Anyone know what kind it is?  I added a slo-mo instant replay to help identify.

Heron in the winter!

We have never seen a heron in our yard in the winter.  They usually only show up in the summer and eat all the tadpoles out of the then shrinking pond (damn it)!  But this one showed up just after the pond started forming again last week and is looking for food.  The pond seems clear and devoid of life right now, but she's sticking around, so she must like something.