This flock of Dunlin is a perfect example of spring brilliance in birds. They molt into their spring brilliance, the males that are, to woo the females, and then their feathers fade away slowly to fall. When they arrive back from migration is when you want to find them. That’s now! Resident birds are a little easier since you know where they are. In either case, find them and photograph them. This flock of Dunlin is a great example of the variety in spring feathers from no color to full-on spring brilliance. It can really make your photos pop when you find that color. Now the time, go get ’em!

Everyone knows that Grizzly hibernates during the winter. This means that seeing them in snow would be rare as they are asleep normally when there’s snow on the ground. In the winter, they also have their thick, luxurious coats. If you’re lucky, you can catch them just before they go into their winter dens or when they just come out. We were fortunate to find them just when they came out but most of the snow was long gone. Got the great coats but no white. So when this Griz came down the hillside and it started to snow, I was hoping to get at least a feel of winter. I took the long odds and slowed the shutter speed down to 1/40 to blur the falling snow. I knew you’d only see it in front of the dark side of the griz. While it was a great idea, it sure didn’t translate! If you look really really hard you will see a couple of white streaks in its face, but that’s it. At least I got the eyes sharp.

Yellowstone has a very well-earned reputation for bears, Grizzly, and American Black. Back in the 40s, large garbage dumps in the park attracted hundreds of Black Bears. Bleachers were built at the dumps for folks to sit and watch the bears feed on the garbage. Cars would park along the road and hand-feed the black bears in those days, it was a total mess for the black bears. Fast forward the clock to last week. Someone thought that they too should try to feed, hand feed a bear that the Techs have come to call Phantom Lake Bear. It was explained to her that feeding bears is not only illegal, is very dangerous (she was reaching out of her car to feed the bear) but really bad for the bear on so many levels. This story was being told to me by a Tech as he explained the bear had a bad limp because it had been hit by a car! He is a gorgeous bear, should heal but bad habits have been started.