Epic Chamois Shot - Observation of the Week, 6/25/24

Our Observation of the Week is this Tatra Chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra tatrica, Kamzík vrchovský tatranský in Slovak), seen in Slovakia by @terana!

“This photo was taken one summer morning in 2013 near the mountain hut where I worked as a student,” says Linda Majdanová, who graduated with a degree in Ecology and Biodiversity Protection. 

When I had free time, I wandered around the surrounding peaks and watched chamois for hours. They are unusually hardy animals. I have many wonderful experiences with them, it is amazing to watch chamois cubs playing together on the remaining snow. Today, meeting a chamois during a hike in the Tatras is not so exceptional, as their numbers, decimated by hunting in the past, have increased thanks to protection. But it is always a pleasant experience to meet this iconic animal, which is undoubtedly a symbol of the Tatras.

A subspecies of the northern chamois, Tatras chamois are herbivorous goat-like mammals which inhabit the Tatras mountains in Slovakia and Poland. As Linda says, they were commonly hunted, with only a few hundred remaining by the end of the 20th century. With conservation work, over a thousand are counted pretty consistently in the mountains now, see the census numbers on its Wikipedia page.

Linda (above) remembers always loving nature, and says 

We lived near the forest and I went on secret trips to nature almost every day and brought home all kinds of bugs, frogs or mushrooms. I was always extremely curious and wanted not only to see, but also to know what I found around me, so instead of fairy tales and children's books, I read educational encyclopedias.

She’s now in the middle of her doctoral studies at the Department of Forest Ecology of the Czech University of Life Sciences in Prague where she specializes in wood-inhabiting fungi in primary and old-growth forests - the topic of her dissertation.

I started contributing to iNaturalist only recently, so I gradually upload older recordings in addition to current observations. I was quite surprised that there are many experts who are able to identify different groups of organisms, which is amazing. Since I spend a lot of my working and free time in the field, whenever I see something interesting or something I don't know, I tend to take a picture of it. And now I know that my observations will not fall into the dust somewhere in a file but will contribute to the knowledge of the world's biota. I also like to look at species distribution maps and find out what lives/grows in different parts of the world.

(Photo of Linda by Vladimír Ruček.)

- this video has some excellent chamois footage.

Posted on June 25, 2024 04:53 PM by tiwane