This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
An elk calf looks at the camera.
My favorite time of year to be in Yellowstone is now. To be more specific, I like to be there from mid May to mid June. The main reason, of course, is all the baby animals. But that’s not all. The colors are fantastic then also. Yes, the crowds can be frustrating. I remember going there in the early 1970’s to photograph wildlife and I never saw another serious photographer. Really.
I didn’t go this year and I really miss it.
A bobcat crouches as it walks through the grass in Point Reyes National Seashore.
This bobcat photo was taken in Point Reyes National Seashore in early March. The grass was nice and green from the winter rains. It’s a different story now. Thanks to our Mediterranean climate, for the next six months you’re photographing most wildlife in brown grass and scattered green shrubs. In areas where there is no livestock grazing, the tall brown grass can be aesthetic. But where grazing has occurred, it loses that tall, aesthetic look. And where grazing has been heavy, it can get downright ugly. It’s that way in a lot of the ranching area of the Seashore. Needless to say, my favorite time of year to photograph wildlife in the Seashore is during the rainy season, from November or December through April.
A nanny goat and her kid rest in the Hoodoos Area of Yellowstone.
It’s not easy to see mountain goats in Yellowstone. There is a viewing location in the northeast part of the park on the road to Cooke City. Look for the sign that says Barronette Peak. But the goats are quite a distance away for viewing, even if you have a spotting scope. Occasionally they show up in the Golden Gate Area which is the Gardner River Canyon you drive through before topping out at Swan Lake Flat. The area is also called the Hoodoo Area. Both names refer to the color of the rocks. I saw these mountain goats in the canyon early one morning. I posted an earlier article about a billy goat in the same area.
The Park Service says mountain goats are not native to Yellowstone, but the result of the introduction of mountain goats for hunting by the State of Montana in the 1940s and 1950s. Apparently, they were released not that far from the northern portion of Yellowstone and they became established in the northern portions of the park in the 1990s. The Park Service also says they may be having a negative effect on bighorn sheep by competing for food. The Park Service is doing research now with other agencies on mountain goat ecology and to determine the effect of the goats on bighorn sheep. Here’s a video about the harm caused by Yellowstone mountain goats.
The Park Service uses the time period of when European man arrived in North America as a goal, time-wise, for protecting, preserving and restoring our national parks. The Park Service is saying the goats weren’t there then. I don’t have any problem with the Park Service’s idea of striving for conditions like those that existed when European man arrived in this country. In fact, I totally support that policy. But the goats are native to parts of the western United States. What if the goats were in the Yellowstone area 10,000 or 100,000 years ago? Would the policy still say they aren’t native? I don’t know, but I would support treating the goats as native in that case.
Blacktail Buck at Sundown
I was out at Point Reyes recently. Thistle and other vegetation that I’ll call “weeds” are growing tall, making it harder to spot bobcats. I only saw one and he wasn’t having any of me. I shot some video of a coyote who was in a field that had just been mowed to get rid of thistle and other weeds (not silage mowing), but the midday sun was harsh. As the day was nearing its end I decided to go to the elk enclosure at Pierce Point. I was there a bit photographing cow elk and yearlings in nice light. After a while the light was fading and I decided to head home. Shortly after leaving the elk enclosure I saw this blacktail buck. He was bleeding a bit on the upper inside of his left foreleg. I don’t know what that was from.
The sun was disappearing fast when I took this photo and I had to shoot at a much higher ISO than I like, but when I have a nice subject I just keep shooting and worry about the noise in the image later.
Newborn Elk Calf along the Madison River
I apologize to those who have followed my blog for not having posted anything for many months. I’m back and one thing I did during the interim was build a new website (and get rid of two former websites). Hopefully, I’ve done what it takes for everyone to find this site. Another thing I did in the interim was go through old images, like this photo of an elk calf, which I photographed in 2014. When I look at old photos I don’t remember much about some, but others I remember very well. That’s true with the images of this elk calf.
It was mid-June in Yellowstone and I was driving along the Madison River looking for animals to photograph, especially baby animals. I don’t regularly drive along the Madison because I don’t have much luck there. That’s partly because the elk herd in the Firehole/Madison area numbers less than 100 animals. It’s the only elk herd that stays in the park in the winter and that takes its toll. The animals are also affected by high fluoride and silica levels in the plants and water which wear their teeth out prematurely. They live about five years less than elk in the rest of the park, according the the Park Service.
Anyway, it was getting late when I spotted a cow elk with this very small calf. Another photographer was already there and he told me he saw the mother give birth that morning. He added that a pair of coyotes had made an attempt to get the calf, but the mother had held them off. I stayed until I couldn’t see and took this photo well after sunset. By that time I had developed some connection to the calf and its mother and I decided that even though it was far from where I was staying I would get there by first light the next morning to see if the little one made it through the night. I got there by first light, but there was no sign of the calf or its mother. I hope it made it.
This is the same female puma I posted recently. She napped a lot and occasionally yawned. Life is good for pumas in Torres del Paine National Park.
I spent lot of time photographing these badger cubs and their mom in the spring of 2014. I kept waiting for all three of them to show their faces to the camera and do something interesting. This photo is the best I got.
I think these little guys were enjoying their little fight. It’s more than just fun though. When their mom sends them into that big world away from her and the den site they’ll need to be able to defend themselves. When I’ve observed a mother predator with only one offspring, the mother always take the place of a sibling and play-fights with the little one to teach it that life-saving skill of defending itself.
