^{Rufous Hummingbird and Sunflower. Canon R5, 500mm + 1.4TC, tripod, 1/2000 @ f5.6, ISO 1600}

The sunflower is the national flower for Ukraine. I wanted to post this today to honor the strength that the Ukrainian people have shown in the face of a horrible tragedy and to honor those that have already lost their lives. I was motivated to share this image due to a story that has been shared by some British news outlets where reportedly a Ukrainian woman handed a Russian soldier a some sunflower seeds and told him to “put them in his pocket so they will grow when you lie here.” I’ll post a link to the article below though it can be found through a google search as well. This sunflower is one of many I have growing in my backyard during the summer months. The hummingbirds that also frequent my yard and the flowers I grow seem to enjoy the sunflowers as well. Here’s the link: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/ukraine-russia-soldier-woman-confrontation-b2022993.html

Even though I need to ski or snowshoe into this location, it doesn’t take long for me to get here. So often when conditions look good from home, I’m able to pack up and arrive here before sunrise. I love this spot but have yet this winter to get the dramatically colorful sky I want. The morning I took this image, I thought for sure conditions were right as there were a lot of clouds above but the horizon looked clear. One challenge living in the mountains is that the horizon can rarely be completely seen to know if there might be a low layer of clouds that will kill the color at the last minute. That’s what happened here. Just as the color started, the sun hit a low layer of clouds that I couldn’t see due to the mountains in the distance and everything went grey and dull. I waited around and when the sun rose above the mountains, a little color was put back into the scene. I’ll keep trying as conditions look promising, but there’s not a lot of winter left so I may have to continue this quest next winter.

Since it’s Tuesday I thought I’d swing back around to a bird image. This time, meet the king! The Belted Kingfisher is probably one of the harder birds I’ve personally tried to photograph. This is on the third time I’ve been successful trying to photograph one. They usually fly off before I can even get set up or, as has happened many times, they fly off just as I’m about to shoot my first frame. I photographed this guy from my vehicle, using it as a photo blind, and balanced my lens on a camera support beanbag. Life in winter can be tough. It was right about zero degrees farenheit and you may notice this bird has ice on the tip of it’s bill. Kingfishers, as their name implies, eat fish so they spend a lot of time diving into the water after their prey. Fortunately, his bill wasn’t frozen shut and once the sun warmed up, the ice did eventually melt off.

^{Two Backlit Moose. Canon R5, 240mm, handheld, 1/5000 @ f8, ISO 400}

If the earlier backlit moose image I posted wasn’t good enough, maybe two backlit moose will be better. This was actually taken the same morning as the image I posted last week with that solo moose being the one on the left in this image. Again, I preferred to silhouette the moose and let the warm tones dominate the scene, which was quite stunning at the time.

Outside looking in. I was in the national forest area outside Yellowstone National Park photographing sunrise but the distant “peak”, Mount Jackson, is inside Yellowstone National Park. Mount Jackson is actually an ancient lava flow and not a peak at all. At the time I shot this image, I was more interested in the foggy backlit pine trees and shot several compositions zoomed in more tightly on the trees. I zoomed out a bit to give myself some cropping options later and actually preferred this image with all of Mount Jackson visible. If I had known at the time I would prefer this view, I might have included a little more room at the top of the image. At the time I shot it, I didn’t want to include the sky because it would be overblown. The brightest part of of the sky above the plateau is where the sun was rising.

Ok, I really like backlighting, or at least variations on it. Backlighting iss when the subject is between me and the sun when the sun is really low, in case you needed me to say that, which you probably didn’t. And I also really like fog. Not super thick fog that blocks out the sun completely but more of a misty kind of fog, or in this case, mist rising off the river. I’ve been photographing subjects in backlit, misty conditions a lot lately. So, starting with the moose image I shared on Sunday, I’ll probably be sharing a few more misty backlit images. Swans are great for this kind of light since they’re white and still show a lot of detail in their plumage where as the moose I shared recently is a very dark animal to begin with so it goes almost completely black, though I still love that image. I’ll also be making one extra post a week for a little while, up from 2 per week to 3 as I have a variety of images I want to get out to you as I appreciate the feedback I receive on my blog and social media.

I mentioned previously that we didn’t have any snow on the ground at all until it started snowing on December 10th. Then it snowed almost daily through January 8th, putting about 2 feet of snowpack on the ground and more in the mountains. It’s now February 13th and we haven’t had any measurable snow since January 8th and the local news reported that all but two mountain watershed monitoring stations are reporting snowpack at about a foot less than normal. I’ve seen a few photos showing up in my facebook newsfeed of bison and the photographer refers to them as “happy” due to the low snowpack. I can’t say whether it makes them happy or not, but the ecosystem is heavily dependent on winter snowpack for moisture that sustains the rivers and meadows well into summer. The entire region has been under a hard drought and this winter certainly hasn’t helped that and in the long term, the drought is more damaging to the wildlife than winter snows. At this point, we can only hope for some big snowstorms to come through and add moisture into the watersheds though with each passing day it seems less likely. I photographed this moose last week. Moose are dependent on wetlands and marshes for food sources. The winter snow fuels these high elevation wetlands the moose need.

This is another image of the otter I posted last week during the same encounter. This was the second fish the otter caught while I was watching and photographing it. Previously it had caught a rainbow trout and successfully landed it and ate most of it. This cutthroat trout was much larger and the otter was having more trouble with it. The fish was finally brought to the bank but the otter didn’t realize the fish wasn’t done yet and just as I shot this image, the fish began thrashing about. The otter lost it’s grip and they both went into the water with the fish escaping.

I’ve seen plenty of fox tracks pretty much everywhere I’ve been skiing and snowshoeing but finding the maker of the tracks isn’t always so easy. And it’s usually a matter of the fox coming to me not me finding it. Since both skis and snowshoes make a lot of crunchy noise no matter how quiet I try to be, the wildlife usually know that I’m coming. When on skis or snowshoes I prefer to go light and only carry a 100-400mm lens as my longest since it’s a lighter, more mobile option. And, while I haven’t owned that lens long, it’s impressed me so far. But occasionally I’ll take the heavier gear and some times it pays off.

In a post previously, I had mentioned I’d been seeing a lot of tracks in some of the areas I’ve been snowshoeing/skiing but hadn’t had much luck finding the animals who had made them. That changed this week. One of the tracks I had seen regularly were of a beaver who had been feeding on willows. As I photographed a colorful sunrise, the beaver found me and swam right through the scene I was photographing. Unfortunately, while he hung around for a while, he did leave before the light was good enough for me to try to photograph him. But a short time later, I came across this river otter. The otter, seen here sliding across some ice on the river, caught a nice sized rainbow trout and decided to haul it out and eat it right across the river from me. As it slid back into the water after finishing it’s meal, it almost immediately caught a much larger cutthroat trout. After some struggles, the otter was able to get the second trout to the riverbank but the fish still had a lot of fight left and was able to struggle free.