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Swaner Nature Preserve Animal Sightings
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Wednesday, January 16th, 2008: Today the Swaner Nature Preserve was host to three bull elk who drew a great deal of public interest. These three elk could be seen resting at the center of the Preserve's southern 855-acre parcel from early morning until late evening.
The Swaner Nature Preserve would like to thank everyone who called and emailed us about our visiting elk, and we would like to extend special thanks to those who sent us photographs of the elk and other important information.
Members of our electronic mailing list received a special update on the elk including some of the pictures we received of our guests.
Limited use rights transfer of the attached images for the use of Swaner Nature Preserve for a news release to their constituents and credit to {Park City Photography / David Winegar} as creator of the same.
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Winter 2007
Mike Flaherty, a long time friend and photographer of Swaner Nature Preserve, took this photograph of a red fox (Vulpes vulpes) and a coyote (Canis latrans) hunting near Highland Drive. Mike noted his surprise when the two crossed paths and “hardly acknowledged each other.” |
June 2006 
Utah Division of Wildlife Resources (DWR) Staff and Swaner Nature Preserve Land & Education Co-Manager, Erin Spear, caught a silver-haired bat near the Wallin Farm Ponds.
Click here for more information about
silver-haired bats.
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May 2006
My first visit to SNP in late May turned out to be an exciting afternoon of discovery. Accompanied by fifty young, eager scientists from Rose Park Elementary in Salt Lake City, we received a wonderful tour from the education staff at SNP. The fourth graders’ eyes were popping out of their heads as they got their first look at Uinta ground squirrels and a nesting killdeer that performed its “broken wing” act to lure us away from her eggs. For most of the students, this was their first trip into the Wasatch Mountains and coming to SNP gave them the opportunity to step into one of Wasatch’s unique ecosystems. 
The field trip ended with a frog hunt out at the ponds in the wetland. The docents made a valiant attempt to keep the students quiet by explaining to them that making noise would scare animals away. However, marching 50 eleven year olds from the city out through ankle-deep muck produced the opposite results- our group sounded more like 50 screaming kids on a roller coaster. I wrote off expecting to see any wildlife at all, but as we approached the ponds, we saw a pair of sandhill cranes that didn’t want to move out of our way. Eventually, one began to charge our group, which really startled the students. Thinking we were near a nest, we took a look around us and saw that we were not more than ten feet from a hatchling! The students all got a close look at the two-legged, brown bundle of fluff as we moved out of the cranes’ way. It was an afternoon we won’t soon forget!
by Kevin Uno
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Winter 2006 
Our Ranch Place home is relatively close to the southern portion of the Preserve and we have often watched sandhill crane and fox visiting the Preserve, especially because the sandhill cranes spent much of their spring behind the Wallin Farm. We relish their mating sounds and dances viewed from the west park in Ranch Place. We were recently happily surprised by our close – and incident-free encounter – with this skunk as he was leaving the Preserve. We watched him start from inside the fenced boundaries, squeeze beneath the fence, and then head on his way along our property line. We have been pleasantly surprised by the amount of wildlife that is her all year and greatly miss the cranes and humming birds when they finally head south. Many thanks to Swaner Nature Preserve for promoting an array of beautiful creatures and open space!
by Neil and Ginger McGarry |
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History 
