This year has been the most exciting year at El Monte. It started out as any other year - opening up the cabin, doing maintenance, etc - then it started looking like a "Wild Kingdom" episode. In June we had a hummingbird come and nest - on our windchime!! Amazing little thing, I barely noticed it as I was spraywashing the cabin and nearly blasted the windchime with the washer. We never saw the egg nor the chick. It must have fledged while we were away in July.
Then in July we had another avian visitor, or two. About 2 meters away from where the hummingbird had nested, we had a mother Robin put her nest and it had two chicks in it when we returned in August.
Finally (so far), we were out at the cabin in late August. One morning my wife and youngest had just come in from outside. Abby, our 6 year old Retriever started growling while looking out the south window. I took a look and there was a Cougar!! Not a small, scrawny cougar either. A full grown and healthy one. I alerted everyone in the cabin and ran to get the camera. The cougar was walking along the drive behind the cabin so I went to the porch door where I could see the cougar as it cleared the corner of the cabin. Here are the pics I snapped.
We've seen bears here before (walked right by the porch) and we've had countless Big Horn sheep come by to munch on the tall grass out front. But this is by far the most exotic summer in terms of variety of wildlife.
Amazing!
