I love Wood Storks! They are such a large, goofy, gorgeous, gregarious bird that is a wildlife photographer’s best friend. When I have the opportunity to photograph them, I’m all over it. And when they are the right height to place the morning sun behind them, I can’t move fast enough to find the right individual that morning for the brief sun shoot. What’s the right one? I want the sun just as it says hello for the day. I want a Stork that is not sleeping, somewhat animated. Then I need a place to stand to merge the two elements in the frame. Yesterday morning I got really close to what I’m wanting, excited to see what today brings as I have a real bad fireball attraction.

All the blood you see here is all there ever was. The silence you hear from the photo is all the sound present just seconds before the cow took its last breath. The Gray Wolf is a very efficient ender of life, it was hard to tell if the cow even felt all those jaws barring down on it. I’m not sure what I was expecting to see, or hear in the takedown. Perhaps more like the lions taking down the zebra when we were in Africa perhaps. If you weren’t looking in the right direction, the peace and calm that is Yellowstone in winter are all your senses presented. It has been a few weeks since the takedown and yet I can’t stop examining the photos, thinking through the moment. That one cow fed twenty-four wolves as well as permitted the rest of the Bison herd to move off to safety. It’s a process that’s brutal and beautiful all at the same time. It keeps me rather focused, it’s just seconds now.

Common Ravens mate for life, the male is the smaller one on the left. Sharon & I call them Edgar and have a deep affection for them because all the decades we have enjoyed their antics. Whenever we see them, wherever, we stop and watch. Last week was no different when this pair seemed to having quite the conversation. At least, the male was busy talking, the female was just listening. It was a long conversation.

I’ve been desiring and chasing photos of bird’s breath for a long time. It sounds so simple until that’s your focus. This last spring I spend many hours for example with Yellow-headed Blackbirds trying for the shot. You basically need a dew point low enough so you can see your breath. Then, you need a darkish background so the breath can be seen. The most important thing is you need to lay the finger on the shutter release. The breath travels real fast and catches the right “puff (cause some shot they appear to have been smoking cigarettes). It was simply a delightful twenty minutes but I’m left wondering what was the conversation?

It was a spectacular morning! The Wapiti Lake Pack was out in force in Hayden Valley. When we arrived on the scene, the pack had focused on a small cow herd by some pines. It was a stand-off until one of the cows tried to make a break for it. I would give anything to understand what was going through their minds because what unfolded was nothing short of stunning. The cows raced across the snow-covered sage. At one point, two cows turned doing a 180 and chasing the wolves as the rest of the herd kept moving. There were at least two yearlings in the small herd. They then turned and ran back to the herd. The wolves were not going to be denied. The whole mass ran behind a small ridge, the trailing cow had one wolf on its rear as they all disappeared for a moment. Then a moment later that cow had done a 90 and was running perpendicular from the rest of the herd which continued to crash through the snow and up the ridge.

That cow’s fate was now sealed. I wonder, did the cow sacrifice itself for the rest of the herd? Did it know its move had sealed its fate? From our brief time, it seemed as healthy as the rest of the herd. Within ten minutes it was all over. The cow had nine wolves feasting on it while the rest of the herd was back to grazing. Over the next ninety minutes, we watched 23 wolves chow down until there was only a head and a rib cage left. It was live drama playing out on the Yellowstone plain. I’d never witnessed a takedown and kill, it was amazing biology to see!

If you look at the chase photo above, you see the wolf below in the pack of the attack pack. She gorged for about twenty minutes, and they laid down and got cleaned up. It then just went of a long walk. She ended up behind us, overlooking all the folks on the road, the kill, and the pack off to the east. It’s like she was taking it all in, the wonder of wolves.

The pursuit of a “bucket list” photo can be a real driving force in one’s photography. So it is with me and owls. I’ve been very fortunate to photograph every owl species in NoAm except the Sawhet with some species quite extensively. But never enough for my passion for these amazing creatures. It all started long ago with this species in Yellowstone when I captured, on film, two clicks, just two clicks of an individual far off on the edge of a clearing. Oh, I’ve had many opportunities with them in CA, OR, MT, WY since, but they all seem fleeting. That is because the nature of owls, is fleeting.

Then this past week I was blessed with an afternoon, over four hours with one individual and it was simply, exceptional! The fact it slept for half of the time was great as it afforded time to just take it all in. From its size, I think it was a male, and having fed quite often, it was quite content. Once it woke up, it was then back on the hunt. I was fortunate to see it go down in the snow twice and downing a vole in a single swallow. In the lower photo, it had just moved to this new ‘perch” as they are able to land on the smallest of twigs. It stared with great intensity straight ahead for some time. Then, without a clue it launched, did a complete 180, landed on a vole, and munched it. Amazing, simply amazing! I’ve spent a lot of time with owls over my career and after these four hours, it feels like just the beginning!

Shaking off the softly falling snow, the Mountain Chickadee waits its turn to dive into the feeder. Along with the Black-capped Chickadees, Nuthatches, and the like, they come in waves about every fifteen minutes. It’s a lot of fun to spend time with them at the feeders but what I’m really attempting is to find where they spend the night. Chickadees pile in to a cavity together at night sharing space and body heat to combat the extreme temps. Despite our best efforts, Sharon & I have yet to find the one cavity they prefer. We have just too many options for them to use shaking off the cold.