Short-tailed weasel.
This week there were a couple of expert mousers hanging out at my place. Actually there are no mice here, but lots of red-backed voles. As vole hunters go, nothing can match the tiny short-tailed weasel or ermine. Continue reading
Raven pair get acquainted during a snowstorm.
Ravens have been lurking around mankind ever since humans began making footprints. They are quick to learn and take advantage of any food sources we provide. And, ravens are smart, perhaps the smartest bird on the planet. They have the largest range of vocalizations of any living creature except of course, for us humans. Continue reading
Twenty years ago, coyotes were one of my favorite photo subjects. This extremely adaptable species was both deadly hunter and scavenger. Nothing it seemed, was too large or too insignificant, too old or too new, to be left off the coyotes menu. Whether it was big game or game birds, domestic sheep or farm-yard chickens, coyotes made few friends. I guess I was one of just a few. The sheer variety of behavior they would engaged in, made each and every encounter a new and exciting adventure.
Coyote feeds on an elk in Wyoming. Tracks and blood in the snow told the story. Coyotes had harassed a cow and her big calf through the night. By morning at least thirteen coyotes had assembled and were finally able to bring down the large calf. Twelve hours later there was only a large trampled area of blood and hair remaining. Continue reading
ON THE TRAIL OF THE LYNX
I’d been on their track for a mile or two. It had taken nearly two hours to get this far moving slowly through the forest on snowshoes. The thick and stunted boreal forest was mostly black spruce. Small stands of tall aspen and veins of thick and lofty white spruce stood where the nutrient poor soil drained enough to prevent permafrost. The understory consisted of numerous species of willow along with Labrador tea and blueberry. Tracks and trails of snowshoe hares were everywhere. The snowshoe hare population undergoes huge swings in numbers during their ten-year cycle. Likewise, other prey species such as spruce grouse were on the upswing driven by years of low predator numbers. The hare population had peaked. And with the increasing snowshoe and grouse population, lynx, coyotes, red fox, northern goshawks and great horned owls, and even the smaller northern hawk owl populations were once again on the rebound. Continue reading
Spectacular Wrangell Mountains in Alaska seem insignificant in this ineffective wide-angle photograph.
I remember my own fascination with the wide-angle lens. My first was a 24mm. The wide view had great appeal to me. It was thrilling to look at the landscape thru my lens. I could fit entire mountain ranges onto my tiny Kodachrome slide! And there lies the problem. A wide-angle lens often includes too much information with detail that is too small.
We expect the camera to record what we see. But, the fact is, we humans see things quite differently than any camera. Humans see their subject subjectively. We concentrate on our subject and don’t notice much else, missing details that we should be paying close attention to.
The camera records everything within the viewfinder, it sees objectively. Right down to all those distracting details we failed to notice.
In contrast, when we look at a mountain range or desert, we see the mountains, the terrain, we feel the wind, we get dust in our eye, we feel the cold or hot, We smell the pines or the sagebrush and the delicate fragrance of wildflowers as our gaze dances from flower to flower and bounce along with a foraging bumble bee.
Dall ram checks out photographer.
Walk softly and carry a big lens. All species of North American mountain sheep, the bighorns, Rocky Mountain bighorn and desert bighorn and the thinhorns, stone sheep and dall sheep are naturally skittish. Specific protocols are required when photographing wild sheep at close range. Ever on the lookout for predators, wild sheep are tuned into sounds of rocks tumbling down the mountainsides or moving across noisy scree slopes. Sudden movements or too much noise are likely to send mountain sheep stampeding towards the nearest cliffs. A telephoto lens is a must. The perspective a telephoto gives will separate your subject from the background. Continue reading
Northern flying squirrel inside its nest in an old flicker nesting cavity. Continue reading
The mosquito is the worlds most dangerous insect. Luckily, none of Alaska’s three dozen species or so is known to transmit disease. Though not deadly in the far north, they are none the less very troublesome. Here are a few other facts about Alaska’s mosquitoes. Only females bite. Some species prey on cold-blooded wood frogs. Some species live around 8 weeks as adults. The snow mosquito over winter as adults and may live a year. Populations can move 25-50 miles. Larva and pupae live in water. Continue reading
The Sea Life Center in Seward, Alaska is one of our granddaughter’s favorite places. She loved the Steller’s sea lions, the harbor seals and the sea ducks. Watching a king crab eat a fish, and getting to feel the anemone tentacles and watching it feed were exciting too.
But what fascinated her the most was that “scary thing” scraping the scum from the sea lion tank.
Stellar’s sea lion.
Male northern flicker on spruce snag.
By the end of May one pair of flickers I had under observation had settled into a routine. After their first egg was laid in the cavity the male no longer called from the nesting snag. Now the calling and most of the drumming was taking place at another dead snag about a hundred yards to the north. Continue reading