I learned a valuable lesson this weekend — check the weather before packing. I went to Yellowstone for Memorial Day to capture newborn baby animals frolicking in meadows of budding wildflowers. I was obviously mistaken. This shot was taken on Sunday, but it could have been either Friday, Saturday or Monday. It was like this the entire weekend — weather I might welcome were it not for the fact that I didn’t bring anything heavier than a light fleece. To make matters worse, a major rock slide on Friday closed off a major section of the park. That being said, it is Yellowstone, and there’s always something to photograph. I’ve never seen more bison in the park and there were, in fact, plenty of babies. This guy was grazing nearby a thermal pond which added to the white out of the blizzard-like conditions.
The female proboscis monkeys that live in Borneo aren’t nearly as strange looking as the potato-nosed males, but still they’re not exactly lookers. To me they resemble The Timbertoes — I know, a very random reference that only people my age might recall from Highlights Magazine which was always in dentists’ and pediatrician’s offices when I was a kid. **This will be the last post until next Tuesday when I get back from a long weekend out in Yellowstone. Have a good Memorial Day.
When I was in Manitoba to photograph the polar bears there was a small film crew there working on a 3D movie of the bears. This camera was set up to record time lapse panoramas of the tide rising and falling on the Hudson Bay. The camera guys were getting a little nervous that the bear might make lunch out of their expensive gear. In this instance, the bear just examined the camera for a few seconds before moving on. A few days earlier, however, a healthy chunk was taken out of one of their tripods.
A couple of photos today of mute swans. These were taken last spring in Cape May, New Jersey. From the ibird app on my iphone, I offer this interesting, yet melancholic tidbit: “The phrase ‘swan song’ refers to this swan and to the legend that it is utterly silent until the last moment of its life, and then sings one achingly beautiful song just before dying.”
I had a few captions ready for this Brazilian guinea pig but then figured I’d just post it and let you think what you will. This one was captured in northeastern Brazil at a place called Hyacinth Valley.
Red colobus monkeys are one of eight different species of primate that we saw in Uganda. They are listed as critically endangered due to sensitivity to habitat loss. This one was spotted in Kibale National Park in the southwestern corner of the country.
I came upon this elephant seal first thing in the morning along the central California coast. It had been sleeping well back beyond the beach and the dunes. At night, they’ll often bed down quite a distance from the water. This one was a juvenile and no longer under the protection of its mother. It didn’t quite know what to think of me at first and just laid there staring at the camera. Then it decided to tell me that maybe I was just a little too close. Not wanting to disturb the seal anymore than I already had, I snapped off a final shot and headed down to the beach to check out the rest of the colony.
This coati was sniffing around in the fruit orchards at Tiskita Lodge in southwestern Costa Rica. With over a hundred different varieties of fruit that bloom throughout the year, the orchards are a magnet for the area wildlife. Those are starfruit hanging from the tree. The coati was feasting on the ones that had fallen on the ground. I also ate my fair share of starfruit, as well as many other kinds of fruit, on this trip.
Birds are always a little more amusing when they’re looking directly at you. This is a cattle egret and it was photographed in Uganda. Cattle egrets also occur in the United States and as the name indicates, they’re often found around cattle. Like other egrets and herons, they are primarily wading birds, but they make their way to pastures to pluck ticks and flies from cows and other mammals.
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