Prairie Ice: Ice

Saturday, January 16, 2016

River Walk

My new pup Quill and I have been spending our lunch time walking along the Yellowstone River for the past couple of weeks. Quill gets his mid-day meal and a good walk, and I get a few minutes of away-from-the-desk therapy. We wander along the bank of the river, or through the Cottonwoods along the trails of a park near my office looking for whatever crosses our path. Sometimes it is beautiful patterns in the ice along the river, other times it is just a few moments of new experiences for a puppy. Most of our short journeys have been relatively devoid of birds except for the usual Common Goldeneyes on the river and an occasional Bald Eagle cruising along the channel. However last week we managed to find ourselves in the middle of a small flock of Black-capped Chickadees, a Brown Creeper, and a White-breasted Nuthatch. I always enjoy watching creepers and nuthatches work their way up and down tree trunks, prying little insects out from the cracks and crevices of the bark. They are always a challenge to photograph because most of the time you see only the back of the bird as they hunt the bark for food.

Sometimes you can catch them working the tree where you can see them better.

A couple of quick little White-breasted Nuthatch calls on my phone brought the nuthatch down to check me out.

Quill enjoys all of it.

Friday, February 20, 2015

Ice Land - Return to the Antarctic Peninsula

64°28'31" S 61°42'34" W. January 30, 2015

I started this blog nine years ago in part to share my photos and stories of trips to Antarctica to a wider group of friends and family than I could manage through occasional emails. That purpose was the genesis of the "Ice" portion of the blog name - I was working in the prairie as well as "The Ice." My trips to The Ice slowly faded away as other portions of my life took over, but I didn't realize how much time had passed without a trip to the far south until last year. It suddenly dawned on me that it had been six years since I had last experienced summer in the middle of winter. The desire to experience the smell of penguin guano in the morning (and everything else associated with the chance to experience that olfactory assault) began to fester. I had to figure out a way to return. The culmination of that desire resulted in an offer to join Oceanwide Expeditions as a guide for two trips on the Plancius, one of Oceanwide's two tour ships operating in the Antarctica, thanks to some friends who are still doing these journeys. The other factors that needed to align and allow me to leave Montana for 5 weeks - work and family - fell into place. Many times during the weeks leading up to my departure I had the feeling that this trip just wasn't going to happen and that there would wind up being something that would foil my return south. But then I was on the plane and before I knew it I was watching the full moon reflect in the dark waters of Florida on my overnight flight to Buenos Aries, Argentina. It really was happening again.

I intend to have a number of blog posts that will be based on this trip. I am not sure how long this material will last or how long it might take me to get these done (work and family are now taking back the weeks they generously donated last month). This rest of this first post is going to be an homage to The Ice with a number of photos of just that - the dominant feature of the Antarctic landscape and a factor in the life of any creature that inhabits that most beautiful continent - ice.