Posts in Category: Desert Bighorn Sheep
Desert Bighorn Sheep Browsing
Desert Bighorn Sheep, Palm Canyon, Anzo Borrego Desert State Park, CA
During my encounter with Desert Bighorn Sheep in Palm Canyon at Anzo Borrego Desert State Park in California, the sheep were actively browsing the whole time I watched them…and that is using the word “browse” in its original sense 🙂 They seemed to be stripping fresh leaves, new shoots, and maybe even flowers from the desert bushes. Here you have Indigo Bush (purple) and Creosote Bush (yellow). Note the delicate technique of closing the lips and teeth loosely around the stem and drawing the head back to strip the good stuff! It takes a lot of tiny leaves and shoots to fill the belly of a Bighorn Sheep…which is undoubtedly why they were so intent on their browse.
Nikon P900 at various focal lengths and exposures. Processed in Lightroom and assembled in Coolage.
Close encounter with Desert Bighorn Sheep
Desert Bighorn Sheep, Palm Canyon Trail, Anzo Borrego Desert State Park, CA
My Year Poem from yesterday concerned encounters with Desert Bighorn Sheep in Anzo Borrego Desert State Park’s popular Palm Canyon. Yesterday was my third hike up the canyon to the Palm Oasis, the first about 6 years ago, and then last year and this. Twice now, on my first hike, and then again yesterday, just where the stream begins to run in its bed, where the Alternate Trail branches off, I have encountered groups of Desert Bighorn Sheep feeding on their way back up from drinking at the stream. The first time was magical as I was alone, and suddenly found myself surrounded by Bighorns. Yesterday I followed a group of tourist/photographers up the Alternate Trail because the Sheep had been seen there from across the canyon on the main trail. There were a dozen of us and three Sheep, but it was still just as magical…just in a different way. Desert Bighorns, at least in Palm Canyon where they encounter people most days, pay little attention to the tourists. They just go about their life-long business of finding enough water and green growth to keep body and soul together in their harsh habitat. This well worn warrior, a ram, shows the effects of both his struggle to survive and his struggle to maintain his harem. Those horns have seen many a battle over breeding rights.
Nikon P900 at 1400mm equivalent field of view. 1/640th @ ISO 100 @ f7.1. Processed in Lightroom.
And here is the poem (with apologies to Emily Dickinson).
Who doesn’t hope for
Desert Bighorn Sheep
when hiking Palm Canyon
(in Anzo Borrego State Park)?
A single encounter is addictive.
Once I stood surrounded
as 15 sheep fed within
20 feet of me, and turned
with that pickling on the
back of my neck feeling to see
one on a bolder right above
me, looking down my collar…
And today… a ram, a ewe,
and maybe a yearling,
went about their business
oblivious to the dozen
would-be photographers
(DSLRs with kit zooms
and even a few phones)
clicking away on the trail
above them…close, so
close I could see the dust
in their coats…so close
you could hear their teeth
tear at the fresh shoots that
sprouted after yesterday’s rain.
I have hiked Palm Canyon
many times and not seen
them…but that does not
stop me hoping every time.
Hope is a thing with horns.
Desert Bighorn Sheep Revisited
Of course I have lots more shots of my Anza Borrego Desert, Palm Canyon, encounter with the small group of Desert Big Horn Sheep. If you remember from last Wednesday’s post, I found myself unexpected surrounded by half a dozen Desert Big Horn Sheep on my way back down Palm Canyon. A few were going up parallel to the trail I was on, at distances of 30-40 feet, and more were coming down the same ridge. It was a very special half hour.
I like this shot because of the way the Sheep is suspended between the foreground rocks and the brilliant green Ocatillo. I am even willing to leave the out of focus branch in the foreground as an atmospheric element. It leaves no doubt that is was a “wild” shot, not something posed in a zoo 
The light in the Sheep’s eye also adds life to the image.
Canon SX50HS. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. 1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1000th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.
Desert Bighorn Sheep: Anza Borrego
I spent some time at Anza Borrego Desert State Park yesterday. Let me tell you, there is no easy way to get to Anza Borrego! The roads that connect Borrego Springs to the coast and population centers are mountain roads as steep and twisty as any I have ever driven. The type where a moment’s inattention spells disaster. On the plus side, they are well maintained and as safe as it is humanly possible to make them, given the terrain.
That said, Anza Borrego Desert itself is certainly worth the trip. I was hoping for early wildflowers. Anza Borrego Desert is justly famous for its spring wildflower show, and this year, given rains and snows at about the right time, looks to be a good one. I knew I was really several weeks early, and that turned out to be exactly the case. Hummingbird Bush and Desert Lavender were the most obvious plants in bloom, and I did find a few Ocotillo pushing out their flower spikes at higher elevations in Borrego Palm Canyon…and was really about it…oh…and there was a Century Plant in bloom at the Visitor Center. You will see some flower shots as the week goes on.
The highlight of yesterday’s trip, though, had to the the Desert Bighorn Sheep. I decided, despite the dearth of wildflowers, to make the hike up Borrego Palm Canyon to the Palm Oasis. There was some mention of Desert Bighorn Sheep in the canyon, and I was hoping, of course, to see some. About half way up I spotted a lone sentinel sheep on the skyline of the canyon…way up and way wee…and I would have been happy with that. However, on the way back down, just were the Alternative Trail branches off (if you have ever been up the canyon), I saw a couple studying something in the stream bed with binoculars. They waved me on to were they were. There were two Desert Bighorn Sheep feeding and drinking along the stream not 40 feet away. Now that was a treat. But that is just the beginning.
Knowing no better, I decided to take the Alternative Trail back to the car (the alternative trail is to trails what the roads from the coast are to roads…it climbed and followed the contours of the mountain around the head of every gully feeding the stream below). However, for the first half mile it also follows the ridge the Desert Bighorns use to travel down to the stream to drink. The two sheep from the stream headed up the ridge at the same time I did and paralleled my course for 20 minutes, never more that 40 feet away, and often less then 30. Twice sheep came bounding down the ridge, passing within 20 feet of me at speed. And then, while taking yet another shot of the sheep from the stream, that you-are-being-watched feeling came over me and I turned to find a Desert Bighorn standing on a bolder right behind me, no more than 15 feet away, and just high enough to make for the classic Desert Bighorn on a boulder shot. I had to dial the zoom back to 300mm equivalent to fame the animal against the slopes behind. I took about every kind of shot you could take, from 24mm wide to intimate telephoto.
And the sheep stayed there while I walked on up the trail, which came around on the other side of the bolder.
Canon SX50HS at various zoom equivalents. Program with iContrast and Auto Shadow Fill. –1/3EV exposure compensation. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity and sharpness.