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.