Badlands Wildlife Western Trip Part 5

It's mid winter. There aren't any stripers to fish for in Providence. There is thin layer of ice on the ponds but it is not safe. Since there really isn't anything going on, I thought I'd share some pictures from my vacation out west in 2010. Of course Yellowstone and the other places I went are not in southern New England, but maybe these pictures will inspire someone to take a trip to any of these places. I'll put about ten to fifteen pictures of each place in a post. Each post will be of just one place. I'll start each post with this opening paragraph. If there are any question about any of the places (admission price, distance from town, etc.. just leave them in comments section and I will gladly answer them). Since these posts take about five minutes and there is not a lot of outdoors stuff going on right now, I'll probably post everyday, so check back often.

As I mentioned in the previous post, the Badlands are full of wildlife. We spent much of our three days looking for animals. There is a buffalo herd and a flock of bighorn sheep. There is a large prairie dog town along with pronghorn and mule deer. The Badlands were our first experience with the west. So for us everything we saw was a new experience


This was the first wild buffalo we saw. We had just crossed into the Sage Creek Wilderness and the livestock barrier. Designed to keep herd animals on one side of the road or another. This big guy was roaming the fence line

 Meadowlark

 Prairie Dog, the grass was much greener in the national park as opposed to the prairie dog town by the convenient store

Many of the bighorn sheep are radio collared for scientific studies. Although these studies are important, a collar does make a picture seem less wild. So we tried to get pics of bighorn without collars.

Lark Sparrow

The term "traffic jam" takes on a different meaning in National Parks. We had to wait at this buffalo jam for almost a half hour.  They simply would not move out of the road, and our campsite was a few miles down the other side.

This Tatonka (Lakota term for bison, which we used a lot) was only about six feet from DJ in the car while we were waiting for the road to clear.

One of the first mule deer we saw. Notice the giant ears

Black Billed Magpie

Burrowing owls live in prairie dog towns. They use the tunnels to nest in. We were lucky to see a couple of them

One of the first pronghorn we saw. The first was on the interstate in Wisconsin. This was the first one we were fairly close to. I assure you, the pics of mule deer and pronghorn will improve if you keep following