Adirondack Wildlife Refuge - Part 1

I decided to drive down to see the Adirondack Wildlife Refuge in Wilmington, New York at the foot of Whiteface Mountain. It was about a 65 mile drive along winding, scenic roads, and I parked beneath the pines and walked down a path to where people were looking into a big pen:

The pen housed three wolves - two gray colored:

  And one smaller, red female:

A young man and woman entered and interacted with the wolves, who behaved admirably with the humans but got pretty darn crabby with each other:

The small red female seemed to be at the bottom of the pecking order but she liked people and, I was later told, seemed to like dogs when the tourists brought them:

I walked from there down a longer trail through the forest (definitely not handicapped accessible), passing a yurt where college student volunteers live during the summer:

They had Ravens:

And Sylvia, the Bald Eagle who has lived here for years. They showed photos of the changes in her plumage color as she matured:

There was a red fox sleeping in his director's chair. He got up and came to the front of his enclosure later, interacting with the tourists, but I forgot to take another photo then:

A Turkey Vulture:

And Nikki, the fox. Nikki had a shedding problem of some kind, but then all of these animals have a problem of some kind which prevents them from being released into the wild once again. In Nikki's case, he was a melanistic (dark phase) Red Fox, probably from a fur breeding colony, who had been abused and used to train dogs to hunt foxes. He was rescued and now lives here:

I wandered among the cages, taking photos wherever I thought there was a chance of them coming out:

The sign on this cage said it contained Kestrels, but it did not. Instead it had three ducks. But there was a lot more to see and I'll post Part 2 tomorrow: