This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
I went out to Point Reyes today. It was a beautiful day. The temperature was in the mid-60s and the place was very crowded. It was a slow day for me photography-wise. Fortunately, near the end of the day this male bobcat saw me and decided I needed some cheering up. So, he decided to walk toward me rather than make the normal quick exit in the opposite direction. Thanks “Bob.”
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.
I photographed this 1 and 1/2 year old cub on three or more occasions in early June of this year. Locals had named it “Brownie.” Each time the cub was between 100 and 200 yards from the road near Pilgrim Creek. Unfortunately, it’s almost certain that this is the same cub that was killed by a car on June 21st. For two articles about the accident, click here.
This is one of 399’s cubs. She is famous for her habit of staying near roads and people, at least when she has cubs. She is also famous for producing triplets, which is rare. I wrote about 399 and this cub previously and said that getting comfortable around roads and humans was not a good thing for cubs to learn. You can read that story here.
One thing I want to point out about this photo is that it’s pretty easy to tell that this is a 1 and 1/2 year old cub. Notice how long and narrow the face is. It’s not much different in shape than the face of a German Shepard dog. By the time a grizzly cub is one year older the face has changed a lot. For a photo of a 2 and 1/2 year old cub whose face is noticeably wider, click here. See the third photo. The cub is on the right. (Mom is still teaching junior the pecking order at dinner. A couple of days later this cub got the boot from mom and a boar that came calling.) For a photo of what the head of a really large grizzly looks like click here. Notice how small the eyes appear in relation to the head. Eyes grow little, if any, from birth.
Here is one of the many bluebirds I saw in Yellowstone recently. I’ve added him and a few others to my website today. You can see the them by clicking here and then using the right arrow on your keyboard. You may need to click on the web page before you can use your right arrow to move to the next image.
Several photographers, including myself, waited for an hour or more for this mother badger to return to her den. It was close to sundown when she returned with this live ground squirrel. She was moving through the sagebrush at a fast pace. The conversation going on got me distracted from what I was doing. I hadn’t increased the ISO as it got darker. The result was that I shot this at 1/320th of a second. The badger is just bordering on being blurred.
I see barn swallows flitting all over at Point Reyes. When I saw this male on barbed wire I was happy to photograph him. There was a male on a post next to him. I don’t normally like to photograph birds on wire, but I liked the way the rust on the wire complemented his colors.
