This duck is called a Barrow’s goldeneye. It is a male of the species — the female having a more brownish head and lacking the white patch on the side of the face. You can’t really tell due to the limited depth of field, but that’s the Grand Teton mountain range in the background.

There were bison with newborn calves all over the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone. This youngster was getting a nice eye bath from its mother.

Bison, elk, pronghorn and bighorn are all having their babies this time of year in Yellowstone. The bighorn rams were especially fun to watch as they sprinted and jumped and defied gravity on the steep walls of Gardiner Canyon.

Due to the weather in Yellowstone, I decided to drive three hours south to Grand Teton National Park. The weather there was much better — for about an hour. This is an elk, probably wondering what happened to Springtime.

There were a ton of bear sightings this weekend in Yellowstone, both brown (grizzly) and black, although it was often difficult to get shots with the huge crowds of people. This one is a black bear, although its coat is more the color of a grizzly. Black bears can be everything from blondish to almost pure black. The bear had wandered into the little town of Mammoth — which is within the park near the northwest entrance — apparently dragging a young elk kill. For the majority of the afternoon, the bear slept off the feast, obscured from view behind a tree which was behind a park administrative building. People had been set up with tripods and cameras for hours waiting for the bear to move and come into view. I decided to leave the crowd and circle back later. When I returned there was no one around so I figured the bear was gone, but then I saw its paw peaking out from behind the tree. A few minutes later it got up and moved into an open area on the other side of the building. I got low, onto the ground, for this shot, which isn’t always a good idea with bears because it signals to them that you are submissive and perhaps taste good. I felt pretty safe, however, being near my car, and by the time I took the  shot there were a few other people around. As you can see though, the bear was looking at me pretty intensely and this is just before it got up and took about five steps toward me before turning around again and heading back to the elk. From its position behind the tree it looked like a pretty small bear, but when I saw it in the open I realized it was actually quite big.

While I was surveying the landscape in search of wolves this weekend in Yellowstone, I noticed this unita ground squirrel about 10 feet away checking me out. As I got down to take a few photos, it started making a sound that I presume was some sort of warning call. In the process, I also got a nice wink.

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.

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 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.