mining mill ruin
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April Moon
spring birds returning
Two images, same bird, taken minutes apart but they look seasons apart. Conifers form a springy green background for the bird on the fence while the pond ice background gives the second image the feel of winter.
Though ice still covers the ponds this week, the Canada geese, six of them, have returned to Lower Lake Ranch to stake nesting claims at the fishing ponds. The one below hid from me in the tall grass the same evening I photographed the robin. Same buck fence in the background but how different the color due to a passing cloud and my angle of view which excludes the conifers in this one.
I caught a glimpse at great distance of a blue heron on the creek the same day I made these photographs so know they’ve come back to us as well. If the high winds of the past week ever slow down I’ll get out to make more photographs of our spring birds.
winter woodpecker
A February image that I liked the moment I looked out and saw the bird and one of last year’s leaves clinging to the top branches of an aspen.
Winter Moons
Full Moon setting over Cathedral before sunrise and Wanning Moon with sunrise-pink clouds and Lions Head
smiling aspen
A little snow really brings out the beauty in this aspen’s face. The mind’s eagerness to find faces in nature’s patterns is well known and hard to resist in a forest full of tree people.
snowing
Now half grown, one of this year’s babies captured as snow fell this morning. It was moving across the hillside with a group of does and young mule deer in a world gone white when I stepped out to make a few images. They stopped to nibble the trees, shrubs, and tall penstemon seed heads around my home before moving on into the trees and out of sight.
winter birds
The pigmy nuthatch comes close to me to get a seed from the just-filled feeder. The finch waits in the trees until I’ve gone back in the house to take his turn at the seed mixture.
deadfall lookout
Autumn Buck
This buck’s going to tomorrow’s show in Buffalo Creek as a 12 x8 inch print matted to 12 x 16″. He wandered by earlier this week (before our big snow) with two does. His antlers still have bits of velvet hanging in strings. By next week’s show in Conifer, I plan to have him in a frame.
browsing buck
elk
In sunsets’ final gleam, a bull, a cow, and a calf from an elk herd during their seasonal rut, the only time the mature bulls and cows hang out together.
Two older bulls and two cows in the meadow near the creek. I was perhaps 600 feet from them, looking down into the valley’s dusk.
Most of the herd, including the largest bull, were across the road and up the hill into the shadowy forest.
Early the next morning, the herd was across and farther up the creek and again moving up into the trees with the bulls bugling and fighting as they went.
In this crop, two large bulls tangle antlers. In the full image below, a young bull can be seen moving in to join the fight. One of the large bulls briefly hooked antlers with him as they moved on into the trees and out of view.
I’d like to have more telephoto power and a faster lens for making elk images at these great distances at dawn and dusk. I rarely see them when there’s enough light for great exposures.
The young bull below was watching evening battles between the big guys from a safe distance. He was much closer to me than the action near the creek and just about the right distance for my 100-400 mm zoom.
