All of our jays, blue jays, Steller’s jay, and Canada jays, that wintered at my feeders left some time in March. The Canada jays do some times return in the summer to use the bird baths. I was pretty excited when they showed up with a couple of newly fledged youngsters and showed them around the yard.

There’s a reason for the first light of morning or last light of the day is called the “golden hour” in photography. While it’s not always an hour, depending on time of year, the golden tone that early or late light puts out is really magical. I saw these two moose out in the meadow and decided I wanted to put the sun directly behind them to create this warmly lit silhouette. Focusing on one of the moose, I spot-metered the scene to get the exposure I wanted and framed accordingly. The moose were surprisingly cooperative and I was able to move around and get some side lit shots too.

Since I’m sitting at home this morning… well I’ve been doing yard work instead of going out to photograph… I thought I’d share this image. I meant to share it well before now because it was one of my favorites when I took it last month. It’s a cedar waxwing perched in a tree and stretching it’s tail feathers. Of course early morning light didn’t hurt either.

I’ve been pretty busy lately and haven’t had time to post so thought I’d make a quick share of a photo. I’ve been seeing plenty of moose lately, mostly bulls, and they’ve been fairly cooperative when it comes to photos. This guy posed nicely in the willows in some really nice early morning light.

I’ve never had a Bullock’s oriole show up in our backyard before. But with a big snowstorm to finish out the month of May, this female showed up. Undoubtedly, the weather brought her to our yard and she stayed for a couple of days to rest up before moving on, but it was certainly a treat to see and watch her.

We had some snow, rain, wind, you name it, over the past several days, but before that, I went out to one of my favorite out of the way places to photograph whatever wanted to show itself. I was fortunate to come across these four pronghorn bucks in a scenic location. I hope to find some pronghorn fawns soon. I’ve seen a couple of fawns, but the mother’s were wary and I didn’t want to add any stress, so didn’t try to photograph them yet

I made my first photographic journey into Yellowstone on Friday morning. It wasn’t my plan, I woke up well before sunrise with another destination in mind. But thunderstorms in the early morning hours changed my mind and instead I went into the park. The light over Mount Haynes and the Madison River was stunning but the rainbow that appeared obviously stole the show. Shortly after, as the rainbow and color faded, I retreated to the car as the downpour began. But it was quite a welcome back to Yellowstone.

This time of year, while there’s still some snow on the mountains, is a great time to do more animal landscape type shots, showing more of the surrounding. In case you haven’t noticed in my last few photos, the elk and moose particularly, I have been working on including the beautiful scenery. I did so here with these pelicans too but was a little locked into what I could do since I was using a 500mm lens at the time and didn’t have any other lens with me.