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.

I spotted this mustang and her young foal in Monument Valley last year. Also known as wild horses, or feral horses, mustangs in the American west are descendants of horses brought over from Spain by early explorers. Most were brought to either Mexico or Florida. Eventually a few escaped or were stolen by native Americans and they rapidly spread throughout the west.

In honor of my mother’s birthday today, I figured I’d post a crane of another sort. This sandhill crane is from Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico.  Every fall, thousands of these cranes, as well as snow geese, flock to the open fields and shallow lakes in the area.

This was another of the sea otters that I recently photographed at Elkhorn Slough in California. As I mentioned before, it’s rare to get them on land like this. I kind of liked the sequence here, as the otter appears to be pretty happy about something.

I thought this golden-fronted woodpecker was a particularly handsome bird. In the US these guys live only in Texas, and a small portion of southern Oklahoma. I photographed this one in Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge near Rio Hondo, Texas. Other than that, there’s not much more to say about them so I’ll attempt to educate instead by tossing out the fact that a group of woodpeckers can be called a descent, a drumming or a gatling. Now go forth and use this knowledge as you see fit.