I guess I should have posted this guy last Sunday. This is a cottontail rabbit, common throughout most of the US. I photographed this one at a place called Bluff Lake near the old Stapleton Airport in Denver. At dawn and dusk cottontails are always out foraging around and I certainly come across a lot of them when I’m driving around the country.
In honor of finally selling my house in Michigan this past week (been on the market for two years) I figured I’d post one more shot of the squirrel that used to hang out just outside my home office window. On hot summer days, it would emerge from its hole in the tree and just hang there lazily on the branch, as if exhausted.
I had been to the Fort Myers, Florida area several times to photograph birds out on Sanibel Island. Each time, I drove right past the town of Cape Coral not knowing that it was a hotspot for burrowing owls. Last time I was there, I stumbled upon an article on the owls and decided to look around. Every inch of Cape Coral seems to be developed with suburban sprawl. Still, the owls find places to build nests — be it in homeowners yards, or small plots of grass adjacent to strip malls, gas stations and Walmarts. Luckily, the residents seem to take it as a badge of honor if a pair of owls digs out a nest in their yard and they do all they can to protect them from harm. Of course, it also helps that they are federally protected. When I was there it was mostly overcast, but then suddenly a little bit of late day sun poked through and I got this shot.
I came across this male red-winged blackbird one morning last summer at the Wellfleet Wildlife Sanctuary in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He must have been protecting a nest that was very close to a little bridge over a pond because when I walked past, he started chirping noisily and even took a few dives toward my head. These birds are fairly common throughout the US and into Central America. I see them a lot when driving around the country. The male has the namesake red wings, whereas the female is a nondescript brown color.
Another hoary marmot from Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. This guy was clearly more partial to the red indian paintbrush than to the other flowers.
Another photo from Saint Augustine, Florida. This is called a tricolored heron. They are smaller than great blue herons and a bit more colorful as the name suggests. They were obviously very approachable at this location and I was able to get within ten feet for close up portraits.
As promised, here’s another armadillo from out on Merritt Island in Florida. As I mentioned in the last post, armadillos are practically blind but they have a very good sense of smell. As soon the wind blew in its direction, the armadillo would sniff the air for a second or two, know that I was there, and then scurry into the woods. The tricky part was getting on the ground quick enough to get a shot.
Not much wildlife to be found in Death Valley National Park in California, but plenty of landscapes. This was my favorite spot to shoot. It’s an ancient dried out lake bed called The Racetrack. It’s known for the mysterious moving rocks that leave trails in the cobbled mud. There are several theories as to how the rocks move, but the one that gets the most agreement is that heavy winds do the moving during the rare times when the lake bed gets wet (which is hardly ever — Death Valley being the driest spot on the continent). Of course, no one has ever witnessed the rocks moving so this is all just a theory. Another interesting thing about this type of dried lake is that it’s the flattest naturally occurring land surface. The Racetrack is in a remote part of this remote national park and very difficult to get to. A high clearance four wheel drive is recommended. I did it in a Ford Focus. And I now owe the rental car company a hubcap.
Here’s another shot from last spring at Mount Rainier National Park in Washington. I was hiking up in the alpine tundra when I saw this hoary marmot distracted by a passing fly.