This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This bull was standing at about a 45 degree angle to the sun before it set. This made for some strong sidelight and backlight. He’s still wearing some of his winter coat. He looks very healthy, but I think he’ll have to undergo a big growth-spurt to have a chance to breed this fall.
This cow is being cleaned of parasites by some starlings. She’s also ear-tagged. She has a yellow tag in her right ear that is numbered “85” and a silver tag in her left ear that is numbered “8527.” I don’t know why the tags were put on her, but she may have been tagged when the Park Service was experimenting with birth control in the late 90s. If so, she’s quite old. All I do know for sure is that I see her a lot and she sees me a lot. When I’m upwind of her that nose gets a real workout.
It’s hard to tell from this little jpeg, but it appears that the starling on the cow’s head is missing toes on its right foot.
The times I’ve seen these sparring sessions they only last a few seconds. I saw a video once where two deer threw rapid punches for quite a while. Maybe I’ll witness one of those with the elk. What I like about this particular moment is the expression on the young bull’s face. I wonder what he’s thinking? Maybe it’s “You’re next buster.”
I went looking for some more fawns to photograph yesterday. I found these two. One has a dark saddle. It is most noticeable when viewed from behind.
I don’t know if this is very unusual or not, but it looks unusual to me.
This owl was in a tree next to the road to Point Reyes Lighthouse. Point Reyes National Seashore has a healthy population of great horned owls. The ranching portion of Point Reyes is mainly made up of grazing lands. These lands have a fairly high population of gophers and other rodents. They are also punctuated by stands of mature trees. Find a stand of mature trees and you’ll find a pair of great horned owls.
This little fawn and its sibling were taking their time playing as they made their way to a bush to hide behind until their mother came back to get them. It may have sensed me after a bit because it went from care-free to stealth-mode very quickly. Once they got behind a single yellow bush lupine I could not see either fawn. The mother didn’t seem concerned. She knew I was about 40 yards past the fawns from her perspective. Her grazing carried her about 100 yards from the fawns, but all she did was occasionally look back at us. Very trusting. Maybe too trusting.
The foreground and lighting would not be my first choice here, but with wildlife photography you have to make do with what you’re given.
This 6×7 bull is probably the largest one I’ve seen on the Tomales Peninsula. However, you won’t see him in the elk enclosure. He and four other bulls live outside the enclosure. They escaped some time ago and I don’t think there is any plan to try to capture them and return them to the preserve. I think this is the same individual I posted on this blog roaming around inside a corral at the Kehoe Ranch months ago. I’ve seen him on his own several times over the past year. The other four seem to stay together.
