This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.
I’ve decided to put a large copyright watermark on my blog images due to theft problems. Some people are not deterred by the copyright symbol and my name in the corner of my images. Hopefully, this will cut down on the theft.
I went to Point Reyes a couple of days ago. It had been a while. When I arrived I quickly spotted a bobcat. It was too far to photograph so I waited a bit to see if it would move my way. It didn’t so I drove on. I quickly spotted another a short distance past the first one. See photo above. He looked like a bobcat I used to see and photograph frequently on another ranch in 2011. I decided to try to get closer to him. Just as that thought came to mind a coyote moved into view behind the bobcat. I focused on the coyote and it was quickly joined by another. And then another. That’s right, a pack of coyotes. I’ve seen three coyotes together several times before at Point Reyes and assume these guys are the ones I’ve seen previously. Usually, I only see a single coyote.
I wondered whether the bobcat saw them and so pulled my eye away from the camera back to look at him. He certainly had. He was doing a fast crawl toward me and my car and his belly was almost touching the ground. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to photograph him as he was already very close to the rear of my car. I re-focused on the coyotes.
They were feeding on something in the soil. I’ve seen this behavior before. They’re definitely not feeding on rodents. I think they’re after insects, or maybe worms, and it might be that they’re finding them under cow pies. I’ll have to start kicking over cow pies and checking them and also checking the soil under them. Really. I’m curious.
After photographing these coyotes, mostly as individuals, I headed for Drake’s Bay. One thing I look for on that trek is elk along the road to Drakes Bay. Sure enough, a herd of bulls was hanging out not far from the intersection of Sir Francis Drake Boulevard and the road down to Drakes Beach. Two of the dozen or so bulls were in the pasture closest to Sir Francis Drake Blvd. I wondered how they had gotten into that fenced pasture. My first thought was they got through a break in the fence. Then one of them started walking along the fence that separated the two pastures. I figured the fence may be damaged somewhere along there. I also wondered if it could jump the fence. It looked pretty high to me. See photo below. It’s looks like it’s a few inches below the bull’s jaw. I was a little worried because many wild mammals have died trying to cross fences.
After a moment or two I decided it wasn’t going to jump soon so I started photographing the others. As often happens with my luck, it jumped right after I took my eyes off it. So, I decided to stick with it and watch the other bull to see if it would jump.
By sticking with it I was rewarded. He cleared it no problem. Like I said though, sometimes they don’t. I don’t think a deer could clear that. Whenever I see them cross fences they go between the strands of wire. I’ve noticed at Point Reyes that the fencing seems to vary all over the place in terms of how high the top wire is and how low the bottom wire is. A good wildlife fence shouldn’t be too high on the top strand or too low on the bottom strand so wildlife can go over or under them. There are several articles on the internet about constructing livestock fences that are wildlife friendly. For one such article click here. As the article points out, top wires should never exceed 42 inches in height and bottom wires should never be lower than 16 inches. Preferably, the top and bottom wires should be smooth, not barbed.
I have hardly seen any coyotes or wolves this spring. Today was a good start in correcting that. The first thing I saw to photograph was a pair of coyotes moving down from the Mammoth area toward the Gardner River below.
Not long after that I saw two wolves crossing the Blacktail Ponds area and headed my way. Both wore collars. Unfortunately, they changed direction and this photo is as close as I got to either of them. As of December 2012, there were only 79 wolves in the park. The highest count was 171 in 2007. Ten wolves which lived in Yellowstone most of the time were shot in the first hunting seasons outside the park. Most were shot within a mile or two of the park. Eight of the ten were wearing radio collars. Anyone with radio telemetry can now find wolves with the radio telemetry and shoot them when they leave the park which it seems people are doing.
While I haven’t seen many coyotes or wolves, I have seen quite a few red foxes which I used to hardly ever see.
Last spring I went out on the local roads looking for young goats and sheep to photograph. I found some kids. Click here to see one of those kids. I also found a ranch that raises miniature horses. Click here for a picture of one of them. However, I learned I was too late for lambs.
This year I went out looking a bit earlier and found a large flock of sheep with many lambs not far from my home. Here’s one of them. The sheep were watched over by a very large guard dog. It had a white coat and weighed about one-hundred pounds. It looked like a very light-colored yellow lab on steroids. I think it was a Maremma breed of protective dog. As I got out of my car to photograph, the dog came toward me to check me out. After a few sniffs he decided I was harmless and he let me pet him. He wasn’t just for “show” either. I had seen a coyote about a quarter mile from where I stopped and parked to photograph.
It was nice to see that this Sonoma County rancher used a guard dog (or dogs) to protect his sheep instead of the poisons and leg traps used on most ranches. Unlike the other counties in California (and other States), neighboring Marin County has a policy of not contracting with the Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services Unit to kill any and all predators by use of poisons and steel traps. Instead, it encourages sheep ranchers to use non-lethal predator control methods such as dogs and appropriate fencing to keep coyotes away from sheep and uses the money it would have paid Wildlife Services to subsidize the ranchers in the acquisition and use of non-lethal coyote control methods. It has worked extremely well. Coyote-caused deaths are down in Marin from the Wildlife Services days and the County has been spending less than it did when it contracted with Wildlife Services. Plus, non-target species (raptors, foxes, bobcats, badgers, weasels, domestic dogs, domestic cats etc.) aren’t being killed in Marin like they were in the Wildlife Services days. I wrote about Marin’s program in this blog.
I wish Sonoma County would follow Marin.
About a year ago I posted a blog with my 10 favorite wildlife photos from 2011. Here are my 10 favorites for 2012. Most of this year’s photos are from Yellowstone.
Finding and photographing this red fox vixen and her two kits was the best part of my trip to Yellowstone last spring.
Baby animals are usually photogenic and these two certainly were.
While on the subject of baby animals, this doe pronghorn kept her two fawns right around the Roosevelt Arch for a week or more. They stopped a lot of cars.
This grizzly bear spent several days in May on the slopes above Yellowstone’s Soda Butte Creek feeding on grass, roots and whatever other vegetative material grizzlies feed on in the spring.
I spent a fair amount of time photographing this bear. It often looked sad to me. I think it was a young bear and perhaps it was its first spring without its mother.
I always see mountain bluebirds in Yellowstone in the spring, but until this past May I’ve never really had any good opportunities to photograph them. They seem to be constantly on the move. This May was different. They hung around.
There are always some sandhill cranes in Yellowstone in the nesting season. They usually tend to be far off though. You often hear them calling before you even spot them. I was lucky here.
I don’t recall ever having seen a yellow-headed blackbird in Yellowstone before this spring. This male was singing to attract a mate I assume. I spotted him while driving the road to the Slough Creek Campground.
There are a lot of white-crowned sparrows in Point Reyes National Seashore in the winter. This male saved what was otherwise an uneventful day.
Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore
The coyotes I see in the ranching areas of Point Reyes are pretty wild. By that I mean they don’t stick around when they see a human. This individual was different. He was comfortable with my photographing him. He may have previously lived in an area with heavy human recreation use.
Point Reyes is my local Yellowstone. It has a wide variety of wildlife considering where it is located. No bison or moose, but it has elk and deer. No wolves or bears, but it has coyotes, bobcats, badgers and one or more mountain lions. You’ll see elk as easily as in Yellowstone and deer more easily. You’ll see coyotes as easily as in Yellowstone and bobcats much more easily.
Well, that’s it. My 10 favorites for 2012. If you’d like to see my 10 favorites for 2011 click here.
In my last post I mentioned that I saw a coyote on the H Ranch. It was hunting for rodents. It didn’t catch any rodents while I was there, but it did eat something that looked like it came from a cow dropping.
Coyotes cover a lot of territory each day. You never know where you’ll see one at Point Reyes, but when you drive by the H Ranch (before Abbott’s Lagoon) look carefully. You have a good chance of seeing one there.
The snow that fell yesterday was sticking when it landed on vegetation, but not on the roads or animals. This coyote was probably hoping it would either get colder or warmer. It looks soaked. The temperature ranged between 30 and 35 degrees. It’s about the same today. There was about four inches of snow on my car this morning and it was still snowing. Fortunately, it’s let up, at least for now.
