As I mentioned in a previous post, the Seal River Lodge in northern Manitoba, Canada has a fenced in backyard where guests can go at anytime while not out hiking. Curious bears will often come right up to the fence, enabling very tight portraits. I tried to take advantage of that with this close up of just the bear’s face.

I don’t usually post shots that were taken in zoos or aquariums, but the jellyfish at the Monterey Bay Aquarium in California are so spectacular that I had to share. Each tank in the jellies exhibit is a work of art in itself and lit to illuminate the translucent beauty of the animal. The jellyfish in this photo are called sea nettles. They live off the California coast and they do sting, but aren’t venomous enough to cause death in a human.

I had seen photos of these calla lilies before but had never been able to find their exact location. Last weekend I was driving down the Pacific Coast Highway south of Carmel, California when I had to turn around due to road closures from landslides. That’s when I stumbled upon this spot in Garrapata State Park on the northern edge of Big Sur. It pretty much rained all weekend but I was able to get the camera out during a few quick dry spells in between the downpours.  The lilies grow along a small river that empties into the Pacific.

About a 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles lies the Carrizo Plain. It’s a large enclosed flatland that extends for about 50 miles in one direction and 15 in the other. This is one of the best places in California to view the San Andreas Fault. I had been there a few times before photographing pronghorn and other species of California’s dry grasslands. On my most recent visit, I didn’t see any wildlife, but the landscape itself was worth a few a shots as the sun set behind the Caliente Mountain Range.

As soon as I got down on the ground, this bobcat became very comfortable with my presence. In fact, it started walking toward me, keeping a watchful eye, but not too concerned. In this photo, it was about 10 to 15 feet away as it slowly walked right on by, on its way to find some breakfast.

I’m out in LA and then Orlando, Dallas and Atlanta for a couple of weeks for work but I wanted to keep the photo of the day blog going so I loaded up two weeks of photos before I left for the airport. That being said, there are a bunch of repeat species. Not repeat photos, but animals that I may have sent before. Like this white squirrel here only in this shot he/she has a nut in his/her mouth which I kind of liked, and it makes the photo different enough from the last time I sent one of these semi albino grey squirrels from Olney, Illinois.

Here’s another from my day at the elephant seal nursery. It seemed as if every adult female was alongside a newborn pup.

Toads may fall short in the glamour department, but they make up for it in personality. This handsome little specimen was rustling around in the leaf litter along the side of a trail in Baxter State Park in Maine.

Here’s another of the pine martens that I photographed over the Christmas break in Silver Gate, Montana, just outside of Yellowstone. There were two scurrying around and they were pretty quick, so difficult to photograph. Every now and again, I’d see a head pop up somewhere and then dart away as soon as I put the camera to my eye. In this instance, I was able to get the shot before the pine marten disappeared again.

I know I’ve been posting a lot of river otters lately, but I keep finding new ones that I like. The otters work hard at keeping a few holes in the ice open throughout the cold winter. The holes also make it an easy time of year to photograph them because (with only three or four holes in a given lake) you always know where they are going to surface.