On Wednesday night (the 15th), I made a last minute trip to Bighorn Canyon to try and find someone. I never did find them, but I did get to see some great things while there.
I first saw Durango’s family grazing near the road. Durango and his mare were together, and his two year old filly and new colt were a little ways from them.
As I stopped and watched, the colt got a burst of energy and started pestering his big sister.
The filly eventually gave the colt a little kick, and so he started running at full speed.
He ran to his mom, but she didn’t show any interest in playing. The two ended up grazing together for a few minutes.
The colt got another burst of energy and ran to his dad, but he didn’t show much interest in playing either.
His big sister had come a little closer, so he ran to her. He jumped on her back and bit at her, then she would bump him off. He did this a few times, and she kept getting him off.
He then ran into some nearby bushes and started to play with the branches in there. He would scratch his head on them or bite them and move them around.
After a few minutes, his big sister came back to him. The two played and groomed in the bushes until their parents moved them higher up for the night.
Driving up the road, I spotted three grulla horses coming up a hill. I thought it might be Merlin’s family. However, none of these grullas had the markings of Merlin’s family. A few seconds later, two more grullas came up the hill followed by a black stallion and foal.
As soon as the other grullas and the black stallion were in view, I knew this was Seattle’s family. The family is unique as it only has grullas and black horses in it; this makes it really easy to identify them. Currently, Seattle has three mares, a two year old colt, a colt foal, and a filly foal.
The filly foal is the grulla. She was born before the colt.
The colt was born grulla, but he has been darkening up for the past month or so. Nonetheless, his dorsal and leg stripes remain visible. I have seen pictures of Seattle as a foal, and he also went through a similar color transformation. Though he is pure black now, he had beautiful stripes when he was younger.
I think Seattle is one of the prettiest of the black horses. Because is so uniformly black, it is hard to get a picture of him that doesn’t look like a silhouette.
Seattle was born and raised in Bighorn Canyon. In years past, his family was one of the most visible out there. This year, however, the family has been living in the middle elevation areas of Sykes Ridge, and so it has been fairly difficult to see them. However, now that they are back in the canyon area, I would anticipate they will remain fairly easy to view.
