This newborn elephant seal seems a bit disinterested as its mother delivers some sort of a lecture. I was just north of San Simeon, California this past winter and newborn pups and their mothers seemed to be everywhere.
Unlike animals with horns, those with antlers grow and then shed a new set every year. It was the end of May when I photographed this male elk in Yellowstone. His antlers will continue to grow throughout the summer and then in the fall, the velvet skin that you see here will be shed to reveal the hard bone like material underneath. The elk will retain these velvet-less antlers until they are eventually dropped altogether in the winter.
A bison walks along a shallow ridge line in Yellowstone National Park. This guy was taking his time catching up to the rest of the herd that had already descended to the far side of that small hill. Earlier a few had stopped to drink from the lake.
I didn’t post yesterday because I was stuck at the airport in Bangor, Maine due to bad weather. I went there to photograph puffins on Saturday morning and then drove up to Baxster State Park in search of moose. Unfortunately, it rained all day on Sunday and the moose were nowhere to be found. I decided to go for a hike anyway and just as I was about ready to give up and head for home, I stumbled across this little fawn. It must have been born the night before because I was in the exact same spot the previous evening and it wasn’t there. The mother wasn’t anywhere in sight, but hopefully was just hiding someplace nearby waiting for me to leave.
I didn’t see too many pronghorn on this most recent trip to Yellowstone, but there were a few out and about. In this photo, you can see the difference between the male and the female. The males have the prominent pronged horns whereas the females also have horns, but they are much smaller and often times barely visible.
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.
