What a day! It's hard to know where to start, so I'll just go in order of how the day developed. On my way to Rocky Mountain National Park, I spotted a baby bighorn by the road so I stopped to see if I could get any pics. I soon realized that there were no other bighorn around at all, unfortunately. This little one was all by itself, but it didn't seemed stressed in the least. I'm really concerned about its well being, but this is one of those situations where I just have to let mother nature run its course. When I drove back by the same spot some six hours later, the orphan was at the same spot -- so that really reduces my confidence about the situation. They are super resilient creatures, and hopefully its able to rejoin the herd or its mother very soon.

Upon arriving to Estes, there were elk all over the place -- which isn't entirely unusual, but in this case it was particularly obvious that there were many different groups and herds on the move. I spotted elk from the southern most end of Estes, to the middle of town, in the middle of the park and even a couple miles from my house. Their antlers have already grown quite large for being so early in the season. Within the park I spotted three moose, three turkeys, a coyote and lots of great birds.

Unfortunately, and in retrospect, I realized that I was being a little lazy with my camera and as a result the sharpness of a lot of pictures was fairly poor. I decided to go back out near my house with only about two hours of light left so that I could try to see some more moose and work on getting sharper images. With the much lower light, I knew it would be challenging, but that's part of the practice of getting better. Thankfully, there were four more moose to practice on and I was able to improve my image stability this time.

My favorite encounter of the day was a mother and her yearling that happened to block my path home. Flanked by snow drifts to each side, I took my time and went through my routine of earning their trust. Before long, I could see that the mother moose accepted me, but I found it really funny that the young male was smelling the air a lot. In my experience, I haven't seen moose actively smelling in this way. I wasn't exactly sure what to make of it, and at my closest point he was really curious. With his mother's back turned away while she grazed, the young male played with a single blade of grass while watching me intently. He didn't demonstrate any aggressive or stressed body language, and after I passed by he started walking toward me as if he wanted to come check me out. He was shy but inquisitive... turning his head away when I'd look back at him. With light running out, I needed to make better time to get back before dark. I saw two more moose before getting to the car -- one was a very dark brown male and the other was single female.