Primarily a bird of high elevations, Clark’s Nutcrackers are more common around here during the winter. In late Spring they migrate up into the high mountains for the summer. Their dagger-like bill is perfect for getting into pine cones for nuts but also is used occasionally for taking smaller birds or eggs. They are closely related to jays, ravens, and crows. This one was photographed in morning light where the background was beautifully lit with nice light.

It’s not often that Earthquake Lake, or Quake Lake for short, freezes over without a layer of snow on it. But conditions this early winter created this rare event. We went a long period with no snow but very cold temperatures, allowing Quake Lake to develop a layer of ice about six to eight inches thick that was mostly snow free. I read this only happens once every 25 years or so, but I don’t know how accurate that is, but it is a rare event nonetheless. Hebgen Lake, which is only a few miles away, while also frozen over, has a good layer of snow on it’s ice. In this photo, frozen bubbles are trapped below the surface among the dead trees which are remnants from the 1959 earthquake that created the lake.

Tomorrow, Monday December 7th, is the last day I can accept orders and have them arrive to you in time for Christmas.

The photo above was taken last year while on my trip through New Mexico and is from White Sands National Park. It’s easy to want to photograph sand dunes with wide angle lenses and I do that a lot. But I also like to use a telephoto lens in order to isolate the shadows, textures, and patterns. This scene really stood out to me and I shot it at a number of different focal lengths and moved around a lot to play with compositions. This may be my favorite.

Last year at this time I was returning from a trip to New Mexico. The focus of the trip was to photograph the sandhill crane and snow geese migration. But there were plenty of other subjects as well, including a few red-winged blackbirds as seen in this photo. Any guesses as to how many birds are in this photo? I have no idea and am not about to try to count! These birds were the background to a few hundred sandhill cranes that were feeding in a field. At the same time, thousands of snow and ross’s geese began to arrive as well. Imagine the sounds of so many birds all coming to feed in the same general area.