Baby Bouquetin Crèche

I spent a wonderful 30 minutes watching this group from about 300m away on the next ridge. It’s hard to believe that these tiny babies with no horns, will develop into huge, horned animals like yesterday’s blip of a mature male. If they are male they will reach 75 - 120 kg or, if they are female, only 50 - 65 kg. This little group of playful youngsters are being looked after by one female whilst the mothers of some of them are off feeding somewhere. The females live in social groups for just this reason. A couple of extras as I don’t think I’ve posted such tiny ones before. 

For those who haven’t seen bouquetin before, all Alpine individuals living today descend from the stock in Gran Paradiso National Park, Italy as elsewhere in the Alps they had been hunted to near extinction. As of 2020, the IUCN lists the species as being of least concern, according to Wikipedia. In Switzerland there are about 7,000. Sadly, culling the big males seems to be an excuse for trophy hunters to pay huge amounts to Swiss hunters and cantons to take them to the male herds. It is not even sport as they are such calm animals they don’t run away! 


I hope you have had a good weekend everyone.