This one is from a trip to Maine a few years back. I was at Baxter State Park when I saw this moose cow in the middle of Sandy Stream Pond. Moose like the nutrient rich vegetation that sits on the bottom of the pond. She was out there for what seemed like an hour, grazing under water and allowing me to get many shots.

A little more than a year ago, I posted a very similar shot of the Joshua Tree landscape and the desert in bloom. This photo, however, shows more of that hairy prickly pear cactus in the foreground that kind of looks like an old man’s beard. The desert blooms very quickly and unpredictably. I was lucky on this trip to catch it in all its glory.

I’ve been thinking about Badlands National Park lately and wanting to get back out there sometime soon. This photo was taken one stormy afternoon back in 2008. Beyond the spectacular landscapes, the park is full of easily seen wildlife, including bison, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, coyote, prairie dogs and the rare and endangered black footed ferret (which I’ve yet to see).

Okay, I know I’ve posted quite a few harbor seals lately, but I really can’t get enough of these guys. This one looked like he had quite the headache. As with the other two harbor seal posts lately, this was taken at Children’s Pool Beach in La Jolla, California.

Here’s another species of cactus, this time in Anza-Borrego State Park in southern California. It was getting dark when I took this shot and I ended it up with quite a few pieces of the prickly stuff stuck to my legs by the time I made it back to the car.

This is an old one that I took back in 2002 when I was living in my car and still shooting slides. I was doing a lot of experimenting with shooting the moon as a double exposure. The rule of thumb was to shoot the moon at the shutter speed of your film (so 125th of second for 100 speed film) and f/16. That way you just record the moon and nothing else on the slide is exposed. You have to remember where the moon is on the slide, then reposition for the landscape. In this case I used a telephoto lens to get the moon and a wide angle for the landscape. Of course, now all you do is combine two different shots in Photoshop, but it was fun to get it in one take. This was at Saguaro National Park just outside of downtown Tucson.

For those of you who have been following my blog for awhile, you might remember the weekly Friday Frog. I don’t know that I’m ready to start posting a frog every Friday again, but here’s an old one that I always liked. This was taken in Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge in southern Indiana.

Here’s another harbor seal from Children’s Pool Beach in La Jolla, California. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that an ongoing legal battle has been stalled in the local courts between seal advocates on the one hand and locals on the other who want to return the beach to human bathers. The story goes back to 1931 when a local philanthropist built a sea wall to protect the beach from dangerous surf and dedicated it to the city under the condition that “said lands shall be devoted exclusively to public park, bathing pool for children, parkway, highway, playground, and recreational purposes.” I guess they didn’t count on the seals liking it so much. My vote clearly goes to the seals (and it seems that most of the locals do prefer the seals too, as it has become a popular tourist attraction).

I also came across quite a few of these California ground squirrels last weekend in La Jolla. They were quite common on the cliffs along the beach. They obviously eat well. This one, in fact, may have been the fattest squirrel I’ve ever seen.

Life appears good for this young harbor seal resting on shore at Children’s Pool Beach in La Jolla (just north of San Diego, California). The beach, however, has become a legal battleground between seal advocates on the one hand, and a faction of local residents on the other who want to return the beach to its previous life as a safe place to swim for children. I was down there this past weekend and was able to get a lot of good shots of the sixty or so seals that were on the beach and swimming in the water. More on these seals and the ongoing battle in a future post.