My chesapeake puppy, Freda, and I hiked up a ridge south of Sweathouse Creek and crossed over to another ridge just north of Gash Creek. Coming down, Freda found a deer shed (antler) and I am running after her trying to see how big it is and scoop it up to take it home.

As I look up, a cow elk is standing nervously in the draw and she doesn't bolt. I had actually seen her in almost the same place on the way up, but now I am very curious why she didn't move on and why she isn't bolting from me.

I sat down trying to hide myself under a shrub while taking photos of her. As she moved, I "snuck" around more shrubs and watched/photographed her as she circled from down in the draw to the right up the draw, across a hillside above me, down again on my left, and back to where I first saw her. Finally, she retreated behind some grass and, I think, crouched down. Now this really didn't take long and I realized she probably had a calf and I should move on and leave them alone. All the time, my puppy was taking a nap in the shade. That was a good thing. I called her and we continued down the mountain.

That wasn't all, near the bottom of the hike I saw a downey woodpecker grabbing a large bug from a dead cottonwood snag. It flew about 3 feet to the next snag and disappeared in a neat hole to feed it's young. I think I will try to go back tomorrow to get photos. They are so darn quick, you have to be really patient to get a decent photo. For today, I was out of time.