Читать книгу Walking in Austria. 101 routes - day walks, multi-day treks and classic hut-to-hut tours онлайн

18 страница из 96

Ibex (Steinbock in German) must count among the most striking to observe in the wild. The male, with its large, knobbly, swept-back curving horns and stub of a beard, is the king of the mountains. It has fairly short legs and a stocky body, but its powerful muscles enable it to spring onto narrow ledges of rock with surprising ease, or race away from danger with an unexpected turn of speed. The female is smaller and less showy than the male. With a grey or coffee-coloured coat and much shorter horns, she spends most of the year away from adult males, and when sighted could be mistaken for a chamois. It is only in the autumn-to-winter mating season that males seek out the females. First, they fight for the right to mate, and then the hills echo to the sound of clashing horns. Some hut wardens spread salt near their huts to entice ibex to graze nearby, and this is often the best way to observe them.

Less stocky than the ibex, the chamois (Gemse) is distinguished by short, sickle-shaped horns and a white rump. Its thick winter coat moults during May or June, and in summer it takes on a dark reddish-brown colour with a black stripe along the spine, and a white lower jaw. Like the ibex, the chamois is well adapted to the severity of its habitat, and is more resistant to the harsh winter weather than the roe deer, with whom it shares the forests when snow covers its normal high altitude territory. It’s a graceful and extremely agile animal, but also a very shy one with a keen sense of smell and acute hearing which makes it difficult to approach undetected. When startled the chamois makes a sharp wheezing snort as warning.