I’ll use my car when possible and/or necessary to remain safe. This is an image I had pre-visualized earlier this spring and waited for the conditions to come together as well as having some cooperative bison for the foreground. In order to make this work, as I shot at a relatively wide angle, compared to most of my wildlife images, I needed to remain in my car in order to not be standing unnecessarily close to the bison. I parked and waited as the bison slowly grazed and moved into the composition. Having a calf in the image was a bonus.

Thanks to a friend, I recently had the chance to see two porcupines and photograph this one. She had been seeing them regularly and took me out to look for them. This one, the larger of the two was resting up at about eye level in a pine tree. Clouds provided soft, even light, which is often necessary when photographing in the forest. We took a few photos and then left him to the solitude of the forest. While I like the above photo as it shows the porcupine’s face nicely, I added the image below to show the entire animal.

Bison are certainly one of my favorite mammals to photograph. They are survivors. They endure many difficulties. Native Americans used to run entire herds of them over “buffalo jumps” where the animals plunged to their deaths over steep cliffs. The US government slaughtered them by the thousands, if not millions. And today, they live in isolated populations where they still face the hardship of winter and slaughter. While numbers I’ve seen vary, it is estimated that somewhere around 2,000 or more bison were removed from the Yellowstone herd of approximately 6,000 animals either through capture or hunting. Even now as Yellowstone finally starts to turn green, most of the surviving herd looks like this bull with his ribs visible and hip bones protruding. Yet his strength helps him to persevere.

Happy Mother’s Day to all the amazing mothers out there! And a very special mother’s day for my own mom who has done so much for me for so many years. And also to my wife, mother to my two wonderful children. This image was from quite a few years ago but it still is one of my all time favorites. A loud truck had just driven past as these two were grazing in a mountainside meadow and the noise startled the cub badly. Mom comforted the cub for a few minutes and they nuzzled each other’s faces. It was definitely one of my favorite Yellowstone moments.

Spring means babies and bison calves are among the first of the newborns to show up. They can be born as early as April but become more commonly seen in May. While I’ve been seeing calves randomly here and there while in Yellowstone, it wasn’t until a few days ago that I was able to have a wonderful photo shoot with several baby bison. The light was really nice and I always look for interaction between either calves or calves and adults. This moment was one of the moments I like to have the opportunity to photograph as the mother nuzzled her calf.

When winter ends and spring begins is often a fine line. Snow can fall at any time across the high plateau that is Yellowstone National Park, even in July and August. It’s actually expected in spring. But after a hard winter like this past one, it can’t green up soon enough for the park’s ungulates who survive mostly on fat reserves. This image was taken this past Saturday and there was very little green showing up in the meadows that weren’t still covered in snow, across 6,500 to 7,000 feet elevation. But I went into the park Monday morning and was glad to see hints of green popping up in the meadows. We’ve had a warm week and some parts of Montana had record high temperatures over the weekend though it is supposed to cool back down again in a few days. The only thing predictable about spring in Yellowstone is that it will be unpredictable!