This little baby moose was probably about a week old. It stuck close to its mother, but admitted to some curiosity about the strange animal-beings with large tubes sticking out of their faces, and five legs.
Wyoming High Country Lodge, Bighorn National Forest
Tags: Moose Alces alces Wyoming High Country Lodge Bighorn National Forest Lovell Wyoming USA
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My efforts to "silk" water cascading over the brink of Shell Falls taught me that water moves over different side channels at different velocities!
Shell Creek, flowing below many mountains in the Bighorn
Range that very generously drain snowmelt into it every spring, is a refreshing little river that has long borne responsibility for making the high desert around it livable for the earliest people in the region to today's agricultural endeavors.
These views of the falls were taken at Shell Falls Interpretive Site, a beautifully thought out site with views galore, maintained by the US Forest Service along US Highway 14.
Tags: Shell Falls Shell Wyoming USA Bighorn Mountains Scenic Byway Shell Falls Interprestive Site US Forest Service US highway 14 Shell Canyon Bighorn National Forest Shell Creek
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This oft-photographed tree has now "passed away" but is nonetheless still standing in the swale of a Hayden Valley rise that is particularly sculptural when covered with snow and perfectly illuminated by winter's slanted light. Every winter photo tour stops so everybody can try their hand at it. I try not to, but while keeping warm in the snow coach when most of my companions got out to get their shot, I shot it with my Tamron 150-600 (everybody else does it wide) through the open coach door. I wasn't happy with the lack of interest in what I got - it was not a good moment light-wise - until I converted it to grayscale and inverted the image. Now it's not the same idea as nearly every other photographer, including the first couple of professionals to notice how beautiful the scene can be - most notably, well-known Yellowstone specialist Tom Murphy ("Hayden Valley Sunstar" and "Hayden Valley Snowdrifts") for whom the tree is named, and another favorite photographer of mine, Tom Mangelsen ("First Crossing") has used.
There are several very good takes on this tree "in situ" on Flickr, just search on Hayden Valley tree.
I hope my image reveals something about this tree that the other pics of it don't.
Tags: Tamron SP 150-600 F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone in Winter Murphy's tree Hayden Valley inversion
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Cottonwood tree with a distinct shape that is interesting from any angle, at any time of year. At the confluence of the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek
Yellowstone
On or about Friday, June 12, 2020, high winds knocked down the dancing tree, which must have been especially vulnerable given its age (based on its enormous size) and long-ago trauma damaging the base of its trunk. Many are mourning its sad ending.
Tags: Yellowstone National Park Yellowstone in Winter Soda Butte Creek Lamar River Tamron SP 150-600 F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2
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While in Gardiner, Montana, I witnessed something I'd never seen before unfolding on the awning of a local business. My attention was caught by the sudden loud flutter of scattering pigeons. I looked up just in time to see a raven smash one of the pigeons into a small space below where its mates had been perched, grab it in its hefty beak, haul it up to the spot where the storefront awning attached to the building, and pound it to death (which, alas, did not come instantly to the smaller bird). It then proceeded to pluck its feathers, and to pull out pieces of pigeon flesh for its meal.
I've seen peregrine falcons take pigeons (in the air), pluck and eat them, but this is the first time I've seen a raven purposefully catch, kill, and consume one.
Tags: Common raven Corvus corax Gardiner Montana Yellowstone National Park Tamron SP 150-600 F/5-6.3 Di VC USD G2 Rock pigeon Columba livia
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