Black-tailed deer are fairly common near the Paradise Visitor’s Center in Mount Rainier National Park in Washington state. This one walked right past me while I was photographing the wildflowers.

I had a request for river otters so here’s an old one from Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge in Indiana. The otter population in Indiana had been wiped out due to over trapping and loss of habitat, but in 1995 they were reintroduced to Muscatatuck and have since thrived at this location.

A couple of minutes earlier I couldn’t see a thing, but as the mist started to clear a lineup of roseate spoonbills appeared feeding on the sandbar. This was at Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge on Sanibel Island on the Gulf Coast of Florida.

Wild mustangs still roam free in many areas out west (and east for that matter), including Monument Valley, Utah. This is Navajo country and this particular photo was taken near the entrance to the Monument Valley  National Tribal Park administered by Navajo Nation.

This is an old one that I took back in 2002 when I was living in my car and drove to Alaska. The place is Katmai National Park, where in mid July the salmon run is in full swing and large numbers of brown bears gather to fatten up before the fall hibernation.  This guy kept poking his head under water, hoping for an easy catch.

Delicate Arch is one of the most photographed landscapes in the world, so nothing new here. But regardless of the fact that photographically it may be a cliched image of the national parks system and the American West, it’s still a spectacular place to visit. You can see the arch from a few roadside vantage points in Utah’s Arches National Park, but to get the full experience, a 1.5 mile, moderately strenuous hike is required. I was most recently there over the 4th of July and timed my arrival so that I would reach the arch at sunset. Unfortunately, there were no clouds to light up the sky on that particular night, but the afterglow of twilight and a half moon provided enough visual interest for a few shots.

I took this photograph of a cabbage white butterfly in Wellfleet, Massachusetts a couple of weeks ago, but it could have been anywhere, as they are the most common and widespread butterfly in the country. And they’re not even native, having been introduced from Europe in the 1860s.