Encounters on the Road: Moose

There is nothing quite like close encounters with wildlife. Yesterday we were driving along the road that leads from the north end of the Highland Valley Copper Mine (a post on that amazing entity in a few days) to Calling Lake. This is a mid-elevation, very narrow dirt road with twists and turns and looming trees, and no other cars. There are amazing views of the open pit copper mine, including the extenisve, turquoise coloured tailings pond.

As we rounded a turn in the road, about 15 minutes along, we almost hit a Moose (Alces alces). The Moose was as startled as we were--we thought the sound of our car grinding along this road could be heard for miles, and any wildlife in the area would be long gone. The Moose was browsing in the trees (aspen) at the side of the road and took a long look at us over its shoulder before running off along the road in front of us. It stopped for another look, and then disappeared into the trees.

The photo below is a little blurry, but you can see a few interesting things. This was a very dark-coloured moose, almost black, and he had noticeable small antlers with a single fork.



We had several other wildlife encounters on this road, but will write about them in another post.

Click here to view the Moose photo gallery on E-Fauna BC.

Notes:

Moose are also called North American Elk, and are the largest members of the deer family. Moose can dive up to 15 feet (5 m) to the lake bottom to feed on plants.

References:

Canadian Wildlife Service and Canadian Wildlife Federation. 2009. Mammal Fact Sheets: Moose. Hinterland Who's Who. Available http://www.hww.ca/hww2.asp?id=93.

Shackleton, David. 2009. Moose Atlas Page. In: Klinkenberg, Brian. 2009. E-Fauna BC: Electronic Atlas of the Fauna of British Columbia [www.efauna.bc.ca]. Lab for Advanced Spatial Analysis, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. Available: http://linnet.geog.ubc.ca/efauna/Atlas/Atlas.aspx?sciname=Alces%20alces).