While we were gone over the weekend, the kids fledged and the nest box was emptied. As quickly and mysteriously as he appeared, they had all left. The quiet about The Ranch is deafening, neither Sharon nor I realized how much we came to depend on that little House Wrens company the past month! Always amazing how quickly one can get attached to a critter!

I knew time was getting close to the kids leaving home. I spent every single moment I could the last week out enjoying their antics and behind the lens photographing all the activity. Mom & Dad would from sun up to sun down bring in bugs to the box. Don’t know how many kids were in there but the book says it can be up to ten! Even during one of the afternoon down pours when we had nickle sized hail, there they were hauling food to that box. I always knew when it was the male coming in. He would land and flutter his wings (like you see in the video at the top of the website) which I always thought of as excitement of being a dad (there is a biological reason though). And he was always the gentleman, letting the mom go in the hole and feed the kids first, him waiting on the perch with the withering bug in his bill. And they brought in every bug they could find! You’ll see a few examples in the slideshow below.

I would prefocus on the perch on a section I thought he would land on by the direction I saw him approach. I had to acquire them quickly in the viewfinder as they would only perch for a heartbeat prior to going in the box. The speed of the Z 9 AF Firmware 2.1 was greatly appreciated! I was just standing there, out in the open behind the Z 9 / 800f5.6 AFS, I wasn’t hiding and he knew quite well it was me. Working in good light was a challenge the last few days. Though good light was on him, I was standing in the full, hot sun. I was wearing my wide brim hat to hide from the sun which he did not like and he told me so. I know that because he gave me the same scolding he gave the Western Bluebird when it came and landed on his perch to investigate the activity at the box. I was bad and took the hat off. It made him happy.

To get a bigger image size, I needed to get closer physically so I attached a extension tube permitting me to move fourteen inches closer and increase the image size by about 18 %. That was about as comfortable as the male was to me though Maggie would often lay down below the nest box while I was shooting and that didn’t phase either adult. On my last shoot as it turned out at the box, I finally started to hear the chirps of the nestlings and I knew I wouldn’t see them fledge as we were leaving the next morning. At the same time, the activity of the parents was at a fevered pitch bringing in bugs it seemed every couple of minutes. One of the last shots I got is the one above, the male perched on the pine behind the box in the morning sun. For once, he sat darn still and for him, a long time in one place, perhaps forty to fifty seconds. It was like he knew, it would be our last time.

We got back to The Ranch a couple days later and as we pulled in, I saw a House Wren out front and I knew they had fledged. When I open the door to the truck, I heard what had become that oh so familiar and heart warming call and then, it was gone. Chores around The Ranch the past couple of days have not been quite the same without his company, it’s pretty quiet. Then, when I sat down to write this post, outside my office window I heard my friend. He was perched in the aspen outside my window, looking in and singing. Then off he flew after the family heading out. What a great spring! Loved every moment except at the end. Can’t wait until next spring to see if the story continues!

Sharon & I were so routing for him! He would be outside our bedroom window before sun up singing and continue all day until sundown. He was at it for almost two months. Though I had seen him once in the company of another wren and I thought I saw copulation, the singing persisted. We thought he hadn’t found a mate. We started to call him Mr Lonely Heart. Then at the beginning of the week we saw him with food in his bill heading into the nesting box. Then we saw TWO wrens with food heading into the nesting box! So, obviously had he not only found love, he made some kids!! And as soon as we discovered this, his singing stopped. What we interpreted as looking for love was actually, bragging he had found love. This little guy is quite the character making observation and photography mandatory for us. When Sharon is in her garden tending to it, he is all around her within arms reach looking for bugs. When I’m out photographing him, he flits all about and the moment I walk away from the camera, he make my 800mm his perch. Our daily vigil now is not to see if he founds love, but looking for the kids to stick they head out the hole. I still don’t know how he found our nesting box, even bigger mystery is how he found a mate, but we’re so glad he found love!

One of my bigger Ranch projects this spring was to build Sharon a deer proof enclosure for her garden (might have gone a little overboard as it turned out to be 38’x14′). I wanted to make it a little more “homey” so on 30 April, I installed a brand new bird house on a east facing post. I was hoping to attract the bluebirds we’d been seeing and that next year they would use the box. Well, we were blown away when, on the very next day from installing the box, it had a resident making a home, a House Wren!

What’s really amazing to us is not that it took up residence that fast, but that we had never seen nor heard a House Wren at The Ranch, ever! We have no clue where it came from and what we’d really like to know, how’d it find us and that new house so fast! It took the little guy no time to overfill his new home with “stuff” and start advertising that he was available. And man, can that guy sing! He serenades Sharon when she’s working in the garden. He’s at the other end of the house singing outside the office window. He’s at our bedroom window at 05:40 singing at the top of his lungs until nearly sunset. And here we are mid June and still, no mate. I did watch him once copulating with a House Wren on his little perch which had me thinking he had found a mate. But I dunno … she left him as he’s still singing his heart out. In fact, he’s at my window looking at me as I type.

We love his presence and he is such a character. We wish him luck as its been fun to watch our new resident look for love!

Bear cubs, they are just the cutest critters to observe and spend time with. Folks don’t realize just how special this opportunity truly is on so many levels. Most simply revert to the old “don’t get between a mother and her cubs” or “mother bears mean certain death” when nothing could be further from the truth. Proof, I’m here sharing my photos of this family group! Yes, mother bears are fierce protectors of their young but like all bears all the time, they much rather avoid confrontation than ever advance it. We saw this family group leave time and time again rather than confront other bears. The world is challenging for a mother bear so for this mom to have three cubs and then a year later, still have three cubs means in the simplest terms, she’s a great mom!

Cubs are a handful! Most Brown / Grizzly Bears have one cub, then comes twins and the most infrequent are three cubs. You can kinda pigeonhole the characteristics of the three with some human traits. The first born is the most prococial, the one out front being adventurous, getting in trouble and giving mom a great amount of anxiety. The second born is the tag-along, being pulled between being with their older sibling adventures and the safety of mom. The last born is the mamma’s boy, always on mom’s flank and unsure of try anything new. It’s easy to assign these traits when you watch them though they can just as easily be totally wrong. But that’s the fun of watching the family group as they go about their day.

One thing is for sure, when there is any question about their environment, the cubs raise on their back legs to look out over the grass that is nearly as tall as them. If there is any perceived threat by the cubs, they are right next to mom in a heartbeat. Mom communicates to cubs with her facial disk her thought on the perceived threat and from that, they react. This mom is around 1150 pounds, she’s a gorgeous nine-year-old Kodiak Brown Bear. There is truly nothing in the area that at her age and health twould scare her, a confidence she communicates in her actions to the young. That confidence is why she permitted us to be part of her world for three days. I can’t wait to spend time again with her next spring and see what the cubs are up to. She’s a great mom!

Almost as soon as they come out of their den, bears are working at getting their winter coats shed. It must be a very itchy proposition because you see bears leaning up against trees going up and down, up and down, up and down all the time! But out of the grass and mud flats, there are no trees so what’s a bear to do? Well, if you have a vast bed of exposed barnacles, you plop right down and use them of course! After an hour of consuming barnacles, that’s exactly what this four year old male did over and over and over again. It made it look sooooo good and he wiggled and wiggled. I wanted to shoot a video but he plopped down so quickly I missed the beginning. Shooting with the Z 9, not an issue, I just held down the shutter release and shot 20fps capturing a few hundred frames of curing the itch. I just have to assemble them and I will have my video. Excuse me now, after watching him lie there, I have an itch!

Yes, very gentle giants indeed! The Kodiak Brown Bear is the biggest of them all, males 1150lbs are common. I carry no sidearm, no bear spray just the deepest love and respect for this amazing critter when I go in the field. Oh yeah, a camera of course! Sharon & I are just back from ten magical days with the bears, seeing around twenty individuals over the ten days in the field. There wasn’t a day that, even if I didn’t take a photo (shot 21k image, 2061 went into the gallery) that I wasn’t watching and being fascinated and totally entertained by the bears. In a setting where all you hear is nature, no another sound echoed from the peaks rising 3000 feet above the water we used as a road to the bears. It’s as close to heaven as I imagine it to be. I came back with a total of three hours of video in the hope that it would help me tell the story of these gentle giant’s life, struggles, fun and hardships. While I like what I captured, the one thing lacking in the still and video is the 360 degrees of the great north smothering every sense we possess. I’m going to try my best over the coming weeks to share that with you. The goober who found our little gang a safe zone to sleep just thirty yards away while bigger bears grazed near by. The wonderful mom with her three cubs, classic text book behavior that unfolded around us. The crazy male that chased a female for four hours up and down the hillside and so much more. While I have all these treasured memories safe and secure on my hard drive, I can’t help but miss them bears as I gaze at the incredibly great fortune I had for ten days with such gentle giants!