Nome: mammals
Our first non-avian wildlife sighting was a cow and calf moose rather far away in the coastal plain as we were almost back to Nome the first day of birding. Moose are not exactly exotic to former Fairbanksans but we wanted to see some anyway. This pair saw us stop and took off running until they got into a pond, as if a rather lengthy stretch of boggy tundra wasn't enough to slow us down. We saw another moose a couple of days later, this one with two calves, in dense brush pretty close to the road. We could see her pretty well, though not the entire moose all at the same time, and we could see the backs and the tops of the heads of the calves until they all took a few steps away and disappeared completely.
At the Salmon Lake campground, where we stopped multiple times, we saw a marmot. I first thought it was a ground squirrel, accustomed as I have become to the rather hefty Olympic marmots, but a marmot he was and Mom and I saw quite a bit of him as he followed the ridge we were walking along.
Rounding out our selection of M-mammals, what I really wanted to see was a musk ox as that was probably the only large Alaskan terrestrial mammal that I had not seen other than polar bears. (I've seen moose, caribou, bear, wolf, lynx, Dall sheep, mountain goat, even a wolverine, before.) We didn't see any in the low-lying areas around Safety Sound where my parents had seen them previously, but as we drove up into the mountains on the third day, we saw two males near the pullout at the East Fork Solomon River bridge. One was grazing and the other was lying down in the gravel and looked rather dead until he picked up his head. He had a bit of a wallow going on in the gravel on the edge of the parked area. We could see them from the bridge very well. I've seen them in captivity because UAF does research on them, but I'd forgotten what goofy-looking animals they are. Their noses twitch like rabbit noses when they eat and they appear to be wearing skirts over long white tube socks. When they walk their long hair/wool swings along like a grass skirt.
The second day we went out that direction, there were no musk oxen by the river, but we found a group of eight high on a hillside near the pass. They were all lying down on our outbound trip but as we returned they were up and grazing. When they are in deep enough vegetation that you can't see their legs they could definitely pass for bears at a distance, especially with their backs to you, but eight grown bears in one spot would be a startling sight indeed.
No bears for us though, just some tracks along a four-wheeler track that we followed as part of a geocaching hike. No caribou either, though we found an antler at one location and some tracks at another. Saw just one reindeer near a set of herding pens.
Our other sighting was foxes--we saw two (at different times/locations) run across the road and disappear into the brush. The most interesting sighting was a fox near the "steam shovel" stop, a pullout that we frequented when looking for bluethroats. Dad had gone back up to the road while Mom and I were still down by the river, and he called us up that a fox was down the road. We didn't make it more than seconds before the fox disappeared into the brush. Not long after it reappeared and started trotting down the other side of the road, right towards us. The road is two-lanes (barely) gravel. It ran right up along where we were, actively hunting. If we started walking it would skitter back, but if we stood still it pretty much ignored us and worked the roadside by scent and sound as if we were not even there. That was pretty cool.
On the marine side, we saw a couple glimpses of seals, but not a whole lot in the mammal department. Well, there was a large dead pinniped, but alive, just a seal or two.
At the Salmon Lake campground, where we stopped multiple times, we saw a marmot. I first thought it was a ground squirrel, accustomed as I have become to the rather hefty Olympic marmots, but a marmot he was and Mom and I saw quite a bit of him as he followed the ridge we were walking along.
Rounding out our selection of M-mammals, what I really wanted to see was a musk ox as that was probably the only large Alaskan terrestrial mammal that I had not seen other than polar bears. (I've seen moose, caribou, bear, wolf, lynx, Dall sheep, mountain goat, even a wolverine, before.) We didn't see any in the low-lying areas around Safety Sound where my parents had seen them previously, but as we drove up into the mountains on the third day, we saw two males near the pullout at the East Fork Solomon River bridge. One was grazing and the other was lying down in the gravel and looked rather dead until he picked up his head. He had a bit of a wallow going on in the gravel on the edge of the parked area. We could see them from the bridge very well. I've seen them in captivity because UAF does research on them, but I'd forgotten what goofy-looking animals they are. Their noses twitch like rabbit noses when they eat and they appear to be wearing skirts over long white tube socks. When they walk their long hair/wool swings along like a grass skirt.
The second day we went out that direction, there were no musk oxen by the river, but we found a group of eight high on a hillside near the pass. They were all lying down on our outbound trip but as we returned they were up and grazing. When they are in deep enough vegetation that you can't see their legs they could definitely pass for bears at a distance, especially with their backs to you, but eight grown bears in one spot would be a startling sight indeed.
No bears for us though, just some tracks along a four-wheeler track that we followed as part of a geocaching hike. No caribou either, though we found an antler at one location and some tracks at another. Saw just one reindeer near a set of herding pens.
Our other sighting was foxes--we saw two (at different times/locations) run across the road and disappear into the brush. The most interesting sighting was a fox near the "steam shovel" stop, a pullout that we frequented when looking for bluethroats. Dad had gone back up to the road while Mom and I were still down by the river, and he called us up that a fox was down the road. We didn't make it more than seconds before the fox disappeared into the brush. Not long after it reappeared and started trotting down the other side of the road, right towards us. The road is two-lanes (barely) gravel. It ran right up along where we were, actively hunting. If we started walking it would skitter back, but if we stood still it pretty much ignored us and worked the roadside by scent and sound as if we were not even there. That was pretty cool.
On the marine side, we saw a couple glimpses of seals, but not a whole lot in the mammal department. Well, there was a large dead pinniped, but alive, just a seal or two.