Evening Thunder and Morning Elk

I took a rather indirect route from Tucson to northern Nevada to help my dad celebrate his birthday this summer, starting in New Mexico, staying a couple of nights in northern Arizona, then southern Utah and finally central Nevada (see Mountain Melody) before driving the final stretch.  My route home was almost as indirect (see In Pursuit of Pikas).  I made lots of recordings, hopefully enough to make it through the quiet winter months.

The second night of my journey was spent in the White Mountains of Arizona, south of Alpine.  I set up camp off of a forest road, near a lovely mountain meadow just as a thunderstorm rolled in.  It didn’t rain much while I was there, but thunderstorms rolled through, one after another, until just before dawn.  I set up the recorder outside of my tent in the evening, hoping to record coyotes or wolves, but ended up playing tag with raindrops until first light.  As soon as I would set up the recorder, it would start to rain and as soon as I pulled the microphone inside the tent, the rain would stop.  Somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, I gave up and kept the mic inside.  I did manage to record some nice thunder, though:

I camped in this same meadow several years ago, for about a week.  It was early June, and the elk were just starting to drop their calves.  I saw and heard coyotes almost everyday, and woke to the distant sound of wolf howls on most mornings.

One day I took my old collie for a walk around the meadow and up the ridge on the far side, making a loop back to camp.  As we walked through the heavy timber of the ridge, I saw an elk cow jump to her feet below us.  She snorted and stomped, and I realized she must have her new calf with her.  I carefully pushed my geriatric dog up over the ridge so we wouldn’t bother her any more, and we made our way back to camp.  The next day we were scheduled to leave, and as we were coming back from a short walk before the drive home, I heard coyotes screaming and hollering not far from camp.  I jogged back to camp and grabbed my binoculars, pointing them toward the noise, which was coming from the direction where we had seen the elk and her calf.  I raised the binoculars to see two coyotes racing in my direction, looking over their shoulders at a large mountain lion that was right on their tails.  I dived into my car to grab my camera, but by the time it was ready to take a photo, the mountain lion had disappeared, but the coyotes still paced the meadow at the edge of the timber, hollering loudly.  Soon they headed to the top of the ridge, and I could hear them complaining as they followed the ridgeline.  Not too long after, the elk cow I had seen the day before left the timber and came into the meadow.  I was sad to see she wasn’t accompanied by her calf.  She took a few steps into the meadow, then stopped and looked back while issuing a sharp bark.  She stood as if undecided, barked a few more times, then very slowly made her way across the meadow to the rest of the elk herd, periodically stopping to look back to where her calf had met its end.

Since that incredible week at the meadow, the Wallow Fire burned through the entire area (see After the Wallow Fire).  I was very curious to see how the fire had impacted the area.  I was pleased to see that most of the area had burned lightly, with some of the smaller Ponderosa Pines killed, but most of the trees intact.  The exceptions were near the tops of some of the north-facing ridges, where most of the trees were killed.

Not so much drama this trip.  I heard no coyotes or wolves, but maybe they were drowned out by the thunder.  But just as it was getting light and the storms finally faded away, I heard the elk calling, joining the songs of the Meadowlarks.  Cows and calves make a lot of interesting sounds in the herd, chirping and hollering, and sounding like anything but a large deer.  It was a very pleasant way to greet the day.

I only stayed one night, as I had a lot of miles to cover.  But I was grateful to be able to spend a few hours in this lovely meadow, knowing the wolves were watching.

Recording notes:  Recorded with a Sony PCM-M10 and Audio Technica AT2022.  Recordings subject to amplification and equalization.