I often get asked “how long did you wait to get that shot?” But often it’s not a question of hours or even days but years. Many images such as my “Three Amigos” or “Baby on Board” are once in a lifetime opportunities and can’t be measure in hours or days. The image above is the result of visiting a location more times than I can count and getting various conditions each time, but after three years I was finally on top of the mountains during a cloud inversion.

The hummingbirds have finally returned to my backyard but a little later than usual. So naturally I’ve spent some time photographing them this past week. This male rufous hummingbird was defending his turf from other hummingbirds that were coming in and I was able to make this photography just as he took flight.

Besides mountain goats and pikas, I haven’t photographed much wildlife. I’ve seen plenty of elk despite the hot temperatures, but I was surprised when I found this bull elk grazing along a small creek in a thermal area in Yellowstone one morning. He never moved to where he was more visible than seen here unfortunately but the light was stunning.

A few days ago I decided to do a short early morning hike to a cascade I’ve been meaning to check out for a while now. While pretty, it didn’t lend itself well to photos but I was yelled at on the hike by several of these guys, pikas. Yell isn’t the right word of course because they make a bleat sound when alerting other pikas of an intruder. On my way back I opted to try to photograph these small relatives of rabbits. Yes, I know, they look more like a mouse but they are actually closely related to rabbits and hares. Fortunately I found a cooperative pika who was too busy building his or her haystacks, grass supplies to get them through the winter months, to care about me too much.

Funny thing about wildlife photography is that you really never know what you’re going to find yourself photographing. I tend to avoid photographing most predator species anymore since, at least in the park, they tend to draw big crowds of people all getting the same images. So I gravitate to lesser known locations and species others tend to avoid. So far this summer, mountain goats have been where I’ve had the most success. This nanny was part of a large group with kids that I came across at sunrise one morning. Interestingly, one of the few ways of telling billies and nannies apart, besides if they have kids or not, is how they urinate. Otherwise it is fairly difficult to identify the gender.

While much of the country is under high summer temperatures, we saw snow come through yesterday. I headed out this morning and went into the high country. The dirt road I was driving eventually had foot tall snow drifts, so I finally parked and hiked the rest of the way to the summit. I had hoped to find mountain goats in the snow. While their tracks were all over, they must have bedded down somewhere. It was still a gorgeous morning.

My annual quest for baby animals had success this past week as I came across a very newborn elk calf, moose twins, and a couple of mountain goat kids. The elk calf was so new that it could barely walk and it hid down in the grass as I drove by. The moose twins, while wonderful to see, were spotted at 5:40 am, so it was too dark to photograph. I hope to see some more soon though. But the mountain goat kids gave me some great photo ops, until finally the small band of goats finally bedded down. The light was low so I cranked up the ISO a bit. The adults largely still had their winter coats and were in various stages of shedding, which is always interesting.

Most mornings in the summer are bluebird clear with very little in the way of clouds. So when there’s not only clouds but also a rainbow with beautiful light, it’s pretty exciting. The morning of this photo did not disappoint as it lasted for a long while. I was able to shoot a number of compositions as I moved around and looked for different ways to photograph the mountains and rainbow, using everything from wide angle to medium telephoto.

I was finally able to get back out and look for wildlife, and great landscapes, last week but we’ve had some hot weather and that always hurts wildlife viewing. I photographed this cow moose in a stand of aspens before things greened up. Her yearling was a short distance from her when I made this image. I’ve been seeing plenty of elk, deer, and pronghorn early in the mornings (not in Yellowstone), but no young yet though there are certainly some out there.

I went out about a month ago trying to get an early start on searching for moose calves. While I saw many moose that morning, it was still early for babies and I ultimately headed to an area frequented by short-eared owls. While I’ve seen them consistently over the years unfortunately the last couple summers I was not successful finding them. That changed last month when I saw one, so when I went out looking for moose calves again this week with no luck, I headed back to see if the shorties stayed. Sure enough I found a pair and this one sat long enough on the sagebrush for me to get a few photos.