Land Creatures

Hi everyone. Happy Thursday to you.

Today it is time for Rain's Art and Dinner Date. This week Rain's theme is Land Creatures. 

You also may possibly  have noticed that I was MIA for the last 2 weeks. I was away on an Iceland adventure with my husband (as probably many of you already know). I thought today for Rain's challenge I would share some land creature photos from Iceland with you.

I'm going to guess that the most populous land creatures in Iceland (even over people since Iceland doesn't even have a million citizens)  are sheep. Other than in Reykjavik and some small villages, you see A LOT of sheep farms.

I don't think I managed to get a clear photo of these sheep crossing signs. Of course I took over 2,000 photos, and I haven't been able to go through them all yet.

And because it was still early in the season, I just loved all the little lambs you saw with their mamas in the fields. They were so cute running  to keep up with Mom.

More often than not they were twins.

I've read that Icelandic sheep farmers let their sheep free range in the summer.  That’s why you find sheep in  places where you wouldn’t expect sheep to be. These include parking lots, roadsides, , on rocky hillsides…

 These next 3 were just outside the hotel window one evening.

When we stayed in Myvatn, there were some nice trails across the street from our hotel. The hubby and I went out for an early morning walk and had a few close encounters with some of the local sheep who had wandered into the trail area and were even on the trail.

It wasn't just breakfast time for us.

Another common animal you see at Icelandic horses.  I call them Viking horses because they are genetically the same as the horses the Viking brought over when they settled Iceland. I believe (but don't know for a fact) that once a horse leaves Iceland it is not allowed back, and that other horses are not allowed into Iceland either.

Sadly I didn't get a lot of horse photos, and even this one isn't very up close.

The 4 legged animal I was most excited to see was one that's been on my bucket list.

In Eastern Iceland there are wild reindeer. Or caribou. They are the same animals, Rangifer tarandus. In North America we call them caribou, and in Europe they are called reindeer.  I often think of reindeer being herded but these reindeer were not being herded nor even in a big group.

There was an attempt to raise reindeer in Iceland many years ago, but it didn't work out. Now the population are all the generations of offspring from that experimental group, and they roam wild. Since Iceland is culturally European, they call them reindeer,.

Every time I've gone someplace where there are wild caribou/reindeer, I have never seen one. ( I have seen them in parks and zoos, but that's not quite the same.) I did eat reindeer back in the 1980's when I visited my great uncle and his family in Sweden, but even then I didn't get to see a reindeer. But now I have seen around 20 of them.👍

These 3 were in a good spot so I could  pull the car over and take some photos. Most of the roads in Iceland are narrow with very small shoulders (if there even is a shoulder). Many of the roads even have steep drop offs, so you can't stop to photograph.  There were 3 reindeer in this group, but further along the Eastern coast I saw a larger group. There was just no place to stop and photograph them.

I'm happy I can cross that 4 legged land animal off my bucket list. And that I was able to snap a photo of them too.  There is only 1 native 4 legged creature in Iceland, and that is Arctic fox, but sadly I didn't see any of those.

That's all for today.  Thanks for visiting, and enjoy the rest of your week.