There's no use trying to sleep in your tent when such exciting things are going on. For the second year in a row we spent an evening chasing the lightning storms. Because the lightning was touching down all around us, and Mrs. Orca insisted that I not get killed for a photograph, I made this shot from inside our subcompact, holding my breath for the twenty second exposure. Lightning crashing over the White Dome Geyser, Yellowstone National Park.
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Aigüestortes National Park, Catalonia, Spain.
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The pacific slope flycatcher has been a regular in the yard all summer. Before today, I believe I have been seeing the same individual multiple times each day, since it has followed the same routine with respect to where it perched and bathed, and since I never saw more than one at once (this was the same thing I observed in 2018, when the flycatcher was a regular in the yard, though that bird perched and bathed in a different place than this one). Today I saw three birds that were clearly together, two of which I presume were youngsters and offspring of the regular. They fluttered about a bit clumsily, seemed uncertain about their actions, and balked at some of their landings, as young birds often do. Pacific slope flycatcher, backyard Olympia.
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Bewick's wren, backyard Olympia.
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After a few days in (charming, laidback) Bitola we went to Pelister National Park. We had last encountered snow in the mountains of Albania, but that was last winter’s snow that never melted. On our hike to Pelister Peak (2601m) we encountered cold winds and came across the first new snow of the season, which—when combined with a 530 pm sunset to reckon with when hiking—was a somewhat unsettling reminder of the advancing seasons. Mrs. Orca descending from Pelister Peak, Baba Mountain, Pelister National Park, Republic of Macedonia.
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