San Francisco Bay and the land and marshes that surrounded it was a biological marvel prior to 1850. We know this because of the very small slice preserved by the SFBay NWR. An unique member of this habitat is the very endangered Salt Marsh Harvest Mouse. Weighing less than a nickle, smaller than your pinkie, this mouse can swim drink and eat saltwater. This old, Kodachrome shot came to be but a freak of luck as a woman at the marsh saw the mouse and shreeked. I was shooting there with the 800f5.6 and would I heard this, I stopped traffic as I stood in the road trying to get the shot. In the mean time, Sharon was rushing back to car to get the 300f4AF and ext tube before the mouse disappeared back into the marsh. Lucky for me, it sat eating its pickleweed until I got the lens and made the click. A special member of our wild heritage!

My first time was just as magical as my last time last December to my favorite New Mexico Nat’l Wildlife Refuge, Bosque del Apache. In Nov ’85 I went to Bosque not prepared in any sense of the word for the experience. I definitely did not have warm enough clothing. I ran short of film (yeah, this was film days) the third of my fifth day there. And especially the visual and audible experience this very special piece of our wild heritage Bosque protects. Many ask, “Has it changed?” The answer is a resounding YES and I regret, not for the better. Water is the heart of Bosque and every year, there is less and with less water, so there are fewer birds. And people, they have increased in number and decreased in field ethics and craft. The combination has made the photography not even the same as the “good ‘ol days.” We are so fortunate to have the Refuge system that we do! We are still guests of nature though, we are entering their home and we’re not being the good guests we should be. Managers are having to “corral” us to protect this fragile and vanishing resource. I still say today what I’ve said since the first time to Bosque, it’s one of nature’s greatest spectacles. Everyone, everyone should it experience more than once!

I have been incredibly fortunate, and fortunate should be underlined, italicized and in bold, being able to enjoy, study, research and photograph in Alaska for the past four decades. I have seen things you can’t imagine and only able to photograph a small part of that. Like this morning, a wolf pack took a moose calf in the trees. Heard that calves pleads for life, saw the cow dash about for thirty minutes in misery, don’t have a single click of any of it. Then there are spectacles of our wild heritage I have been able to photograph and share with you all, like this amazing Kodiak Brown Bear mom and family! This past week though, I have had my worse fears confirmed, in part why I’m here this week, that photographers have done more damage then good with their cameras. I saw it happen in another locale fifteen years ago with coastal Griz and now with my Northern Cousins in the Chugash. I’ve been in this spot before, having a great place to sit, watch, relish in and photograph a critter only to loose it to the masses. In the past, I was able to find a place to replace it. That’s getting harder and harder to do because society as a whole has been wiping out paradise . It’s a hard reality for me to accept. But I’m back once again looking for greener pastures.

The rainforest of Lamington Nat’l Park around O’Reilly’s is teaming with bird life this time of year. The vast majority are incredibly colorful, have crazy calls and do everything in a big way. One notable exception is the Grey Shrike-Thrush. While “common” you are lucky to see one during a twenty-four hour period and even more lucky to get one in the viewfinder. With that said, on everyone of my visits to O’Reilly’s I’ve have the opportunity to photograph one and long enough to get the “Say What?” cock of the head. I’m not sure if it’s trying to hear better, see around me, watching a predator overhead or what, but rotating their head until it looks like it’s going to pop off seems to be common. Knowing this was coming at some point, I wanted the rest of the frame to be “light and whimsical” to support that look. I didn’t want the “dark” rainforest like I had previously. I dialed in +0.03 exp comp into the Z 9 for the ambient light and used the Profoto A10 bringing up the value of the Shrike-Thrush. The end result just makes me smile so in the future when back in MT, I can look at the photo and know it’s saying, “Say What?”

My mom was a big time beachcomber with an incredibly impressive shell collection from around the globe. I spent a whole lot of my time as a kid on the beach amongst the thousands and thousands of shorebirds vying for the same sand where I as building castles. There was one group I constantly saw running back and forth with the waves. The pattern they made as they ran as a flock fascinated me. We’d see them in spring and winter and they looked totally different though they had the same behavior. I asked my dad who was a reluctant beachcomber what they were doing there on the beach, he looked at the Sanderlings and then looked back at me and said, “They chase the water back into the sea.” There isn’t a time when I’m lying on the sand photographing these incredible travelers I don’t think of that. These days though, there are a whole lot fewer Sanderlings and other shorebirds and there is a whole lot more water. It might just be in the near future we’ll truly need their “special” skill at chasing the sea back!