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.

I’d been trying for close to six weeks trying to get a photo of this marten. I have see him in the woods behind my house about once a week or so. I tried tracking him about two weeks ago and stumbled on some bear tracks in the snow, so turned around and headed back. Last week, he made an appearance and I was finally able to get two photos including this one.

I just finished up a quick project before Thanksgiving for a client where I needed to go back through some of my older wolf images. This image is from 2012. While hearing and seeing the wolf howling was incredible, the heat shimmer coming off the snow was so bad that most of my images were unusable. Meanwhile the image below is from 2010. To encounter a wolf coming towards the road is pretty lucky. I had stopped in a pullout and was watching the wolf several hundred yards away when it decided to cross the road. I never got out of my car but photographed using a beanbag support for my telephoto lens. The wolf crossed the road and went about 100 yards or so up a hill where it lay down and howled.

I watched this squirrel as he used the same path to pick up pine cones and take them back to his cache. While the light wasn’t great, I set up, using a low angle, manually focused on a point just beyond where he jumped, manually set the exposure, and shot a bunch of shots trying to get the squirrel in mid air and in focus. This was the keeper.

Hoping everyone has a safe and happy Thanksgiving tomorrow!

First, the last day I will take orders for holidays to arrive in time for Christmas is December 7th.

I’ve been photographing the different phases of the moon lately. While a full moon is interesting due to the entire disk being visible, the moon has more texture and depth at other times when the sun is lighting it at more of an angle. The above photo was taken on November 6 and the one below was taken on November 20, for comparison. While both images were shot with a long telephoto lens, I still needed to crop about 50% of the image for the moon to look this large in the photo.

I’ve probably stated this before but it’s worth repeating, the correct name for this beautiful bird, as stellar as it may appear, is Steller’s Jay. Named for naturalist Georg Steller, they share that distinction with Steller’s Eagle and Steller’s sea lion. They’re also one of only two crested jays, with the blue being the other. With their striking black and blue coloration, they are certainly one of my favorite birds.

A coyote in the snow from a few days ago. We have had a very mild autumn until recently. Now the snows have arrived and reminding us of what it’s supposed to be like in Montana in November.