roverrocks
Expedition Leader
My wife and I spent the morning of Feb. 1, 2014 touring the new 6" snow covered hills, flats, and lower ridges of Peach Valley, Colorado just NW of Montrose, Colorado. Beautiful morning in the 20's with a much needed previous day new heavy wet snowfall in the Uncompahgre Valley area. Should be a good wildflower season next spring in the area after the abundant desert moisture this storm brought. Peach Valley lies in the western part of the Gunnison Gorge National Conservation Area and borders the farmlands of the irrigated Uncompahgre Valley further west. Midway through our morning 4x4 tour of some of the area trails we came over a rise and suddenly two Golden Eagles took flight out of a lowland sagebrush area. Couldn't get my camera out in time to get a real good shot of the mated pair just above where they took flight but a got a shot of them flying southward. Thinking they might have hunted and killed something from where they took flight; we got out and and searched the the Desert Cottontail trailed area of burrows and sagebrush sunning spots. We came across a heavily wing-beaten area and with further searching found the pair's fresh eating area of blood and leftover gore. All that remained of Bugs Bunny (RIP) was a picked off leg bone and part of the furred head with mouth and teeth. Here are some pictures of the eagle kill site plus the surrounding fresh snow covered trails, flats, and ridges of Peach Valley. Also a distant picture of a large flock of sheep being fed pellets that we had slowly wheeled through earlier in the morning. The sheep dogs let us be known to drive on or they were going to eat my Land Rover and ourselves. Click on the pictures to enlarge them.
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