Wild animal sighting you felt the luckiest to experience?

The two that come to mind right away that are the most memorable are a Hawaiian Monk Seal when I was younger and visiting Kaua'i and more recently last year wild Mountain Tapir when I was in Ecuador.

Last year in FL I was also lucky enough to see wild dolphin and manatee. Where I live Pronghorn and Moose are not uncommon if you know where to look.
 
Cougar/Puma in Patagonia; just an amazing species I never expected to see.

Belugas in the St Lawrence; wonderful species that involved quite a bit of effort to see.

Little Penguins in West Australia; Penguins are awesome!

Maori Wrasse in the Great Barrier Reef; very up-close interaction with an awesome fish species.
 
birdsandbats said:
For a lot of us (including me) Moose and dolphin are dream species, not "just common animals"!

Whooping Cranes though, I see them all the time. ;)
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Never seen whooping cranes, but have seen many bald eagles, great blue herons, Elk, Osprey, Alligators, Cottonmouths, Pelicans, Stingrays, Conches, Pufferfish, Flounder, Mackerel, and Cormorants. Most of these, along with the Dolphins and Moose, I would consider common in the regions I visited, hence why I didn't think that I was 'luckiest to experience' as it might be 'unlucky' not to see them in the regions I visited. (mostly Florida or Colorado) However I no doubt feel very 'lucky' to have been able to travel to where they live and see them.
 
a snow leopard in mongolia last year. after serching for 4 days one aperd i got god views for about 3 mins. 30 mins later i wood have bean inposebal to see duo to the sun rise blindin that area.
also god wonder full views of mongolian saiga. i belive i am the only one on zoo chat to see this sub species. the rest of the trip was also awsome

doing a pelgic around round island of the cost of maurtius. hundres of red-taild tropic bird. thousens of soty terns, plus mask booby. in general going to the seychells and mauritus and birding whare few birders have bean.

i aslo realy like the day i had a mount kinabalo in borneo this januari. to bad this trip was not pure wildlife waching trip. but i want to return soon and find soome more bird and mammals.

waching a mother orangutang and young one fead in the trees ower me.

swimning with manta rays in the maldives. alos two species of sea turtels.

my 3 african safaris so far. higligte is waching a leopard at close rage or meting a hyena on foot.

closer to home i aloing with 500 other birds lisenin to sweadens first wilson snipe.
or lots of other birding trips in sweaden.

best of all is tha i now i got lots of thing tho see in my life. i am only 20 years old so i hope i have lots of time to see the worlds wild life
 
Not as cool as most of the answers, as I don't travel much, but here's a few that I love to recall.

A few sharks, one off the coast of South Carolina at Myrtle Beach. I was young and it was far away being reeled in by someone, so I don't know the species, but my guess would be likely sharpnose or blacktip. One fishing trip with my brother in Florida someone reeled in what I'm sure was a baby nurse shark, and another trip with my brother I nearly missed a shark swimming away, to me likely a sharpnose or blacktip.

West Indian manatee in the canal behind my grandmother's house in Miami.

Barred owl my bus driver spotted in 6th grade, sweet driver stopped and allowed us to see it. Gorgeous bird.

Great horned owl swooping down on something.

Grey fox darting across the road.

I'm slightly sure a red fox, a fox for sure, near a suburban neighborhood across the street from a grocery store.

Burrowing owls near my dad's old apartment complex, and years later a small family of these little birds while learning to drive in a school parking lot. Both sightings in Florida.

Several ospreys in my lifetime.

A juvenile and adult bald eagle soaring over a lake while fishing.

Black bear from a hotel's pool window in Gatlinburg, Tennessee.

Woodchucks off the side of the road just about every year. They're just amazing rodents to me.

Belted kingfishers while fishing in South Georgia.

Gators several times in my life in Florida, but especially an alligator behind my school when I lived there for a while.

Hummingbirds coming pretty much right up to me in Jamaica, and even once in Georgia a hummingbird stopped in front of me before zipping away.

Wood ducks in my neighborhood.

Also while living in Florida, sandhill cranes soon became a common but still amazing sight for me. Also saw peacocks there every now and then.

Sorry for the big list, but these are just some of the sightings I love to share and all I can recall anyways.
 
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I’ve seen endangered blue iguanas, and Roatán spiny-tailed iguanas on the same cruise going from Galveston to Grand Cayman, Cozumel, and Honduras. Me and my sister walked by a creature sitting in a bush while walking down to the creek, it ran back into the woods but I think it was a bobcat.
 
Probably the big three off the top of my head are:

1) Seeing both Leatherback Turtle and Cuvier's Beaked Whale off the coastline of Skye in August 1999.
2) Watching a group of about 30 Griffon Vulture and 5-6 Cinerous Vulture fly directly overhead when I visited Madrid in Feb 2019.
3) During the same trip to Madrid and the surrounding area, watching a lek of over 100 Great Bustard in the steppic pastures northeast of the city.

Another pretty good contender is my first ever wild shrike - I was walking along one of my usual seawatching routes near Newcastle when I saw a massive group of people with cameras watching a small bird in a nearby overgrown thicket.... I walked over to see what had caught their attention and was informed it was a Daurian Shrike.
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
Was this in the Sierra de Guadarrama ?
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No, although I did end up doing a spot of birding (and ibex watching) in the southern reaches of the Sierra de Guadarrama a few days later!

My mass-sighting of vultures was next to the Manzanares River as it passed through Monte de El Pardo. I also saw a good few Spanish Imperial Eagles that day, too.
 
TeaLovingDave said:
No, although I did end up doing a spot of birding (and ibex watching) in the southern reaches of the Sierra de Guadarrama a few days later!

My mass-sighting of vultures was next to the Manzanares River as it passed through Monte de El Pardo. I also saw a good few Spanish Imperial Eagles that day, too.
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I was based in the Sierra de Guadarrama for a bit a couple of years ago so it is a place I really love.

Yes, the ibex and birdlife are amazing and particularly at Peñalara which I imagine you visited when you were in the Sierra ?

Monte de El Pardo is a brilliant spot for wildlife in general and so close to the city too, I'm sure you managed to see a few of the deer and boar there too, right?
 
Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
and particularly at Peñalara which I imagine you visited when you were in the Sierra ?
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I didn't, unfortunately - myself and Helly hired the services of a local guide who took us around about half a dozen locations throughout the north of Madrid and surrounding portions of Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León, over the course of a single long day :) if/when we return to the area, we intend to do the same again but over the course of multiple days to allow us to go a little further afield and visit extra locations.

Onychorhynchus coronatus said:
I'm sure you managed to see a few of the deer and boar there too, right?
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We did indeed :) was a very good trip indeed - as was the whole of our week in the Iberian Peninsula. At some point I shall have to type up and post my list of species seen wild over the course of that week - the majority were either wild lifeticks (at species or subspecies level) or lifeticks full stop!
 
TeaLovingDave said:
I didn't, unfortunately - myself and Helly hired the services of a local guide who took us around about half a dozen locations throughout the north of Madrid and surrounding portions of Castilla-La Mancha and Castilla y León, over the course of a single long day :) if/when we return to the area, we intend to do the same again but over the course of multiple days to allow us to go a little further afield and visit extra locations.



We did indeed :) was a very good trip indeed - as was the whole of our week in the Iberian Peninsula. At some point I shall have to type up and post my list of species seen wild over the course of that week - the majority were either wild lifeticks (at species or subspecies level) or lifeticks full stop!
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Some brilliant wildlife viewing to be had in both Madrid and Castilla y León. I definitely think its a good plan to spend a couple of days in the region though as there is a great deal to see and next time definitely check out Peñalara as you wont regret it in terms of wildlife.

My personal favourite area of Spain I think for mammals / megafauna would be Asturias as there it is relatively easy to see wolves, bear and wildcat along with chamois, deer and boar and plenty of birds too like chough.

Yes, that would be interesting indeed, I would like to see it for sure.
 
How common are sea turtles in other parts of the world? I saw at least fifty sea turtles on a trip in the Sandy Strait last week and I have seen many before this so I figured they were relatively common worldwide but considering the fact the feature in this thread I presume not?
 
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