I photographed this northern flicker at Sylvan Lake State Park in Colorado. It’s the only woodpecker that commonly feeds on the ground. It also has the odd distinction of having over 100 common names, including yellowhammer, clape, gaffer woodpecker, harry-wicket, heigh-ho, wake-up, walk-up, wick-up, yarrup, and gawker bird. Most of the names are attempts at imitating its calls.

The bighorn sheep I saw up at Mount Evans in Colorado over the 4th of July weekend were looking a bit on the haggard side. Well, maybe more than a bit. As you can see, this ewe that I photographed along the side of the road wasn’t exactly sporting a camera ready fur coat. But then again, the patchy look kind of adds character.

Here’s another request, this time from my young friend David Koffler. In the spring, female snapping turtles will travel on land for great distances to find suitable sandy soil to lay their eggs. I came across this one as she crossed a freshly sprouting field of crops near Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware.

Of course, I can never know for sure, but I’m pretty sure this pronghorn was flirting with me. This one was taken a couple of years ago in Badlands National Park in South Dakota.

Back when I lived in Denver, Great Sand Dunes was always one of my favorite places to visit. It’s about a 3 hour drive southwest of the city. Back then it was only classified as a National Monument but today it is given full National Park status. Mule deer and pronghorn are common grazers in the fields that lead up to the dunes. In this photo, a mule deer was keeping his eye on me as I pulled over to the side of the road.

I got up before sunrise everyday on my recent trip out West hoping for great clouds and fiery skies for landscape photos. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a cloud in the sky on a single morning. And without the clouds, I usually resort to plan B — shooting the sun. This was in Monument Valley, another National Tribal Park on Navajo land in the southeast corner of Utah. Like yesterday’s post from Maroon Bells in Colorado, this is a location that gets photographed a lot — most notably as the backdrop to countless Westerns and Marlboro Man ads.

This is the most photographed spot in Colorado — the two Maroon Bells peaks as seen from Maroon Lake near Aspen. I tried to be at least a little original by including the geese.

When you can’t find any other wildlife to photograph, there are always prairie dogs. This one was part of a colony along the side of the road, next to a gas station somewhere in eastern Utah. It was chirping a warning signal to the rest of the colony before it had finished eating its lunch.

Being only about an hour from Denver, Mount Evans is a location that I’ve been to a lot. I see mountain goats about 75% of the time that I go there. I’ve shot a lot of close ups of the goats in the past, so on my most recent trip, I really wanted to get some photos that show their environment in the high Rockies. These two kids were taking a rest while there mother was grazing just to the right of the composition.