Wild animal sighting you felt the luckiest to experience?

elefante

elefante

Well-Known Member
15+ year member
Did any of you ever have the good fortune to see a rare species in the wild? Or another wild animal you felt lucky to see? For me, the one that stands out was seeing two whooping cranes in Montana. I was in an area where they are rarely spotted. My brother and I saw a pair fly overhead and they were unmistakably whooping cranes. Nobody else was around and most people didn't believe us when we mentioned it.
 
Iberian lynx pre-dawn in Sierra de Andujar National Park, Spain (2010).
Grizzly bear extended viewing (fairly close) in Denali National Park, USA (2016).
Bobcat at dusk in Tucson Mountain Park, USA (2020).
Bobcat extended viewing in Yosemite National Park, USA (2016).
Coyote being chased by five mule deer and a raven at Grand Canyon National Park, USA (2020).
 
Canada Lynx crossing the road near Moose Pass, Alaska.

Muskox and Polar Bears in Alaska’s Arctic and Wolves near Anchorage, Denali Park (photo in the gallery), and along the Alaska Highway in B.C.

Wood Bison bull in B.C.

Grizzly Bears from one end of Alaska to the other...with a couple of really interesting encounters.

And not least...a very obviously heavy on the Red Wolf Coyote-like Canid crossing a road in the pre-dawn outside of Demopolis, Alabama in the late 1980’s.
 
Almost too many to list; being surrounded by over 600 elephants in Botswana, and watching Hunting Dogs Hunt Wildebeest (unsuccessfully). Watching and listening to Indri in Madagascar (with a bonus striped tenrec). Displaying Birds of Paradise (Twelvewired, Raggianas, Greater, Lesser and particularly King of Saxony). Hooded Grebes. Fishing Giant Otters. Mountain Gorillas, Chimpanzees, Orangutans, Gibbons. Breaching Humpback and Bryde’s whales. Iberian Lynx. Leopard. Colugo....
 
For me, probably the two most recent high points were as follows:

Seeing an out of range whooping crane from the wood buffalo population during the summer in central Alberta

and on another birding note, going to go look for white faced Ibis (also in central alberta) at a small lake where a flock of around 50 or so was known to hang out. I got there and eventually found the flock of around 50 birds. I sat there watching them for a while and something spooks them, and suddenly there's around 5-600 white faced ibis all spiraling in the air around me! Definitely a cool sight, and something I was not expecting to see at all.

A little less "unique", but still very cool, was seeing wild Manta Rays in Hawaii.
 
I've had a lot of great wildlife sightings, but I don't have to think hard to know my favorite. It was without a doubt seeing a prairie-chicken lek:

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Driving out of Death Valley, up in the hills that follow, I came across a female Coyote and its pup right at sunset.
Earlier this year I drove right by a flock of Northern bald ibis in Southern Morocco. I stopped and had a great time following them around for a little while, again, at sunset.
 
I don't go many places, but some critters I was a fan of seeing:
-Northern sea nettle (Ketchikan)
-Bottlenose dolphin (Washington coast)
-Pronghorn (Highway in Utah)
-Western screech owl (Road in California)
-American bison/Grizzly bear (Yellowstone)
-Great blue heron (Shoreline Park)
 
I've seen many animals that I never thought I would see in the wild when I visited Costa Rica. They weren't necessarily rare, but I enjoyed seeing them. They include:
Great Kiskadees (they were everywhere)
A pair of Scarlet Macaws that hung around the area I stayed
Two American Crocodiles (fully out of the water)
A Brown-throated Sloth
Tigrisoma sp. probably T. fasciatum
A troop of Panamanian White-faced Capuchins
A troop of Central American Squirrel Monkeys
A very friendly Collared Peccary
Green Iguanas everywhere
A Black Spiny-tailed Iguana
probably others.

I've also seen Common Bottlenose Dolphins multiple times on my travels.
 
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