2013 Review in Photos - Part 1

Since I didn't do a great job of posting here last year I decided to at least catch up a bit now through the photos I took. So without further ado here is my year through photos:

January - An early January trip to Fort Peck to look for sage-grouse in winter and a sledding trip with friends.

February -

March  - Backyard birds and a trip to Woodland Park, Colorado and the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs.

April - One of my favorite months. I got to spend some time, but not enough, at Greater Sage-Grouse and Sharp-tailed Gouse leks. I also spent a fair amount of time taking lots of photos of the Red Crossbills frequenting the feeders in our back yard. I also got to see and get a rather poor photo of a Baikal Teal in Missoula at the end of the month.

May - Springtime in Montana and another trip to Fort Peck as well as a quick trip to the Rocky Mountain Front for a visit with the guests at Pine Butte Guest Ranch during their naturalist weekend.

June - A busy month for me. I co-led a trip for Naturalist Journeys through Eastern Montana and had a great time (I will be doing it again this year if anyone would like to join Woody Wheeler and me on a great trip - see the link above for Naturalist Journeys). Little League was in full swing and we did a trip over the Beartooth Highway. I also worked on a Sprague's Pipit workshop back in Glasgow.

Yellowstone in Winter - 2013

This week my family did our annual (second) winter Yellowstone National Park trip. Just one day over and one day back again this year although we said that we would like to make it a bit longer next year for the second year in a row. One of my goals for the trip was to spend some time trying to get photos of American Dippers along the Lamar River. I tried last year but wasn't happy with the results so I modified my approach and tried again this year. I am not completely satisfied with the results this time either, but they are better than last year. Maybe I will have it figured out in time for the next trip.

I only got to spend a short amount of time with this particular bird. It was fun watching him jump off the ice and disappear into the moving water and a short while later leap out of the water with what appeared to be small green caddisfly larvae pulled from their sandy cases. They were eaten quickly and the bird returned to the ice edge for another round of foraging.

This stretch of the Lamar River has a pretty high density of American Dippers and they appear to each occupy about a 10 meter portion of open water. There was also a small flock of Barrow's Goldeneyes near where I was, but I didn't get a chance to get any photos of them. Next year!

I did find time to take a few shots of this Bighorn ram too. He must have been pretty active earlier this fall - both sides of his horns were broomed pretty good.

Christmas Present

This morning on my walk along the river I found this nice little Christmas present. The last two years I have been fortunate to find a brood of these Eastern Screech-Owls in this area, but I haven't been able to find one outside of that. My lack of success in locating one of these birds isn't for the lack of trying. Every walk I look at the broken tree tops and check out cavities without ever finding an owl. This morning it paid off though. Sitting on a broken tree top that I have looked at a number of times was this little guy soaking up the morning sun.

MY Fish...

Pronghorn Portraits

I have had a bit free time on my hands lately which has provided me with a few more opportunities to get out with my camera. Today I managed to track down this Pronghorn.

Counting Birds - James Harrison

I stumbled upon this poem this afternoon while moving books from shelf to shelf and I had to post it here. 

Counting Birds

As a child, fresh out of the hospital 
with tape covering the left side
of my face, I began to count birds.
At age fifty the sum total is precise and astonishing, my only secret. 
Some men count women or cars
they've owned, their shirts --
long sleeved and short sleeved --
or shoes, but I have my birds,
excluding, of course, the extraordinary 
days: the twenty-one thousand
snow geese and sandhill cranes at 
Bosque del Apache, the sky blinded
by great frigate birds in the Pacific
off Anconcito, Ecuador; the twenty-one 
thousand pink flamingos an Ngorongoro Crater
in Tanzania; the vast flocks of sea birds
on the Seri coast of the Sea of Cortez
down in Sonora that left at nightfall, 
then reappearing, resuming 
their exact positions at dawn;
the one thousand cliff swallows nesting in he sand cliffs of Pyramid Point,
their small round burrows like eyes, 
really the souls of the Anasazi who flew 
here a thousand years ago
to wait the coming of the Manitou.

And then there were the usual, almost deadly
birds of the soul -- the crow with silver 
harness I rode one night as if she 
were a black, feathered angel.
the birds I became to escape unfortunate 
circumstances -- how the skin ached
as the feathers shot out toward the light;
the thousand birds the dogs helped 
me shoot to become a bird (grouse, woodcock,
duck, dove, snipe, pheasant, prairie chicken, etc.).

On my deathbed I'll write this secret 
number on a slip of paper and pass
it to my wife and two daughters.
It will be a hot evening in June
and they might be glancing out the window
at the thunderstorm's approach from the west.
Looking past their eyes and a dead fly
on the window screen I'll wonder
if there's a bird waiting for me in the onrushing clouds.
O birds, I'll sing to myself, you've carried
me along on this bloody voyage,
carry me now into that cloud 
into the marvel of this final night.

James Harrison (1990) - The Theory and Practice of Rivers and New Poems

Turkey Vulture

This week I was able to spend a couple of evenings at a spot where about 26 Turkey Vultures have been roosting. The location is on a high hill and I enjoyed the eye level views of the birds playing the updrafts on the edge before they settled into the hill-top radio and microwave tower cross-members for the night.