Toad
Toads may fall short in the glamour department, but they make up for it in personality. This handsome little specimen was rustling around in the leaf litter along the side of a trail in Baxter State Park in Maine.
Squirrel Monkey Eating Palm Fruits
In all my travels, Tiskita Lodge in Pavones, Costa Rica was one of my favorite places to stay. Down near the Panama border, it’s not easy to get to, but well worth the effort once you do. I probably saw a greater variety of wildlife just walking around the grounds of the lodge than I’ve seen anywhere else. I was there for four days, and each afternoon a small troop of squirrel monkeys would make an appearance just outside my room to feed on the various fruiting trees. They were just one of the many species that I could literally photograph from the hammock on my front porch.
Japanese Macaques
With all the devastation we’ve been seeing and reading about in Japan, I had been wondering about the snow monkeys that I visited two springs ago up near Nagano. Being well away from the coast and up in the mountains, I figured the tsunami wouldn’t have been a factor, but the earthquake did hit the Nagano area, and regions of high thermal activity are always a concern. Thankfully, the live cam that sits above the Jigokudani hot spring (plus a quick google search) indicates that life is going on as usual for the monkeys.
Pine Marten Behind Tree
Here’s another of the pine martens that I photographed over the Christmas break in Silver Gate, Montana, just outside of Yellowstone. There were two scurrying around and they were pretty quick, so difficult to photograph. Every now and again, I’d see a head pop up somewhere and then dart away as soon as I put the camera to my eye. In this instance, I was able to get the shot before the pine marten disappeared again.
Red Kangaroo Mother and Joey
Time for some random kangaroo facts to enrich everyone’s lives. A female is called a flyer. The males are called either a boomer or a buck. And the young, of course, are called joeys. These two here, a mother red kangaroo and her joey, are in a place called Flinders Ranges National Park in South Australia.
Yet Another River Otter
I know I’ve been posting a lot of river otters lately, but I keep finding new ones that I like. The otters work hard at keeping a few holes in the ice open throughout the cold winter. The holes also make it an easy time of year to photograph them because (with only three or four holes in a given lake) you always know where they are going to surface.
Spot Flanked Poison Dart Frog
This little guy is called a spot flanked poison dart frog. The photograph was taken in Madidi National Park in the Bolivian Amazon. This is a very small frog and I needed my macro setup to get the shot. Other than the name, I really don’t know too much about this frog and not much is written about them online.
Ochre Sea Stars
Been a while since I posted something from the Pacific northwest, so here’s another look at the ochre sea stars that can be found up and down the coast of Olympic National Park in Washington. These sea stars are predatory, preferring to eat mussels, and they are actually quite important to the healthy diversity of their habitat. In their absence, mussels take over almost completely, crowding out other species. This photo was taken well after the sun had gone down and I needed a 25 second exposure in order to have enough light.
Elk and Pine Beetles
Continuing on last week’s theme of depressing stories from the field, I figured why not one more, this time featuring an elk and pine beetles. Pine beetles are killing trees in Rocky Mountain National Park at an alarming rate. Entire mountainsides are now rust colored, rather than the usual green, as a result of the devastation. Many factors are thought to be causing the problem, some natural, some perhaps not — warming yearly temperatures are just one of the culprits. There is certainly cause for concern as the trees disappear, but there are also those who believe that this may be a good thing, clearing the forest of old, weak trees while making way for more diversity and growth in the future. A parallel has been made with the fires that swept through Yellowstone 20 years ago. At first thought of as a disaster, we now see that it spurred a rich diversity of new habitat and species.
Osprey with Fish
That’s an osprey. That’s a fish. And that’s about all there is to say about this one. Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge in Texas.