I came across this barred owl along the side of the highway on Sunday in Red Hills State Park in southern Illinois. Click below to hear what it sounds like:

Barred Owl Call

I had been reading about the white squirrels of Olney, Illinois for a while now and finally made a trip out to see them for myself on Saturday. Several other towns in the US proudly proclaim their resident white squirrels, but none seem to advertise the fact as aggressively as Olney. In fact, the masthead on the town’s official website includes a little circular logo with a white squirrel’s head and the slogan “Home of the White Squirrels.” The same slogan is seen on the sign that welcomes you to town. And on the side of police cars. And on bumper stickers in shop windows. And on signage all over the city park. At first I was skeptical of the hype as I could only find the regular gray guys — but then I finally saw a white one foraging in a resident’s front yard in all its colorless glory. I would eventually see six or so more before leaving town the next morning. I was surprised at how skittish the squirrels were, making it difficult to get shots, but then again maybe that’s because I live in New York where in Union Square they’ll gladly crawl onto your lap if you let them. After hanging around for long enough under a tree in Olney’s City Park, I got the squirrel in these two photos to feel comfortable enough to go about his business while I went about mine. He would repeatedly come down to the ground to grab an acorn before running back up the tree to eat it. There are about 200 white squirrels in Olney — actually albino variants of the common gray squirrel.

Muscatatuck National Wildlife Refuge in Indiana is one of my favorite places to photograph — a little gem of the National Parks system. This weekend I went back for the 5th time in search of river otters. The otters are never guaranteed and if you do see them, they’re often far off in the middle of one of the many lakes in the refuge. Not this time, as I had my best look at them yet, including this family of three I photographed at the end of the day on Sunday. For the most part, the surface of the lakes are frozen, but the otters poke holes through the ice in areas where it is thin and spend the day fishing, resting on the ice, and making sure the holes don’t freeze over. I got tons of shots, so more on these guys in upcoming posts.

Here’s a close up of the young bull moose I saw just outside the entrance to Yellowstone in Silver Gate, Montana. You can see how deep the snow was already in late December. The areas surrounding Yellowstone get about 10 feet of snow a year, but due to the park’s unique geographic positioning, it can get up to 50 feet a year.

Due to weather conditions I wasn’t able to get to the more thermal areas of  Yellowstone. That being said, Soda Butte Creek in the Lamar Valley always had a bit of steam coming off the surface of the water and I was able to get a few landscape shots of bison grazing, like this one here just after sunset.

A quick break from Yellowstone to check back in on the polar bears.

The reason mid October to mid November is the best time to go to northern Canada to observe polar bears is because they are all waiting around for the ice to freeze on the Hudson Bay so that they can go hunt seals. In the meantime, they’ll do anything to kill time, including rolling around in a pile of dead grass, like this guy here, providing plenty of photo opportunities.

No matter how many red fox I photograph, I always get excited when I see one out there running around doing its thing. Definitely one of my favorite animals. This one hardly acknowledged that I was there as it ran by me in search of breakfast.

Bison are the most conspicuous animals in Yellowstone, often times blocking the road as they move from one area of the park to another in search of new places to graze. This guy seemed to be the leader of a small herd that greeted me almost immediately on day one of my visit. With his goatee and horns, I thought he looked a bit satanic — you know, if Satan was hairy and hung out in the snow. Those of you who work with me, however, might agree that he looks more like Dante our sound engineer.

I spotted this cow and bull moose just outside the northeast entrance to Yellowstone last Thursday afternoon in the small town of Silver Gate, Montana — probably a mother and her grown son. They were just about the same size, but eventually he’ll grow to be much larger than her and each year he’ll grow a bigger and bigger rack of antlers, which he’ll drop annually sometime in the winter. This guy’s antlers were pretty small, giving an indication of his age, but a fully mature bull can have a rack that is 6 feet across and weighs up to 90 pounds.