The Glossy Ibis in full adult breeding plumage in the right saturated light is an amazing subject! I saw a photo like I just described many decades ago, and it left a heck of an impression. Being on the West Coast, I would come across the White-faced Ibis, still a gorgeous bird, but it doesn’t light up like the Glossy. Whenever I see the Glossy and the right light is just a hint, I seek that photo I saw long ago. Last week I had a Glossy in that light, and you can see a hint of its amazing color along its flanks. An adult would have those colors all the way up the breast and neck. Spectacular!! But sigh, it is an AHY individual and not fully in adult plumage. It’s the best I’ve brought home so far, but it is a long way from that photo I saw so long ago. I look at it and sigh, if only a breeding adult.

Hell’s Half Acre is what Midway Geyser Basin was originally known as. The trail across the Firehole River and up the slope to the world-renowned Grand Prismatic thermal area, one passes Excelsior Geyser. Once a very violent geyser, these days it has settled down and just pours out 4050 gallons per minute of nearly 200f degree water. In winter, it bellows out steam, which just inches from the hot influence of the geyser returns to water, freezing where the wind takes it. There is a bench on the boardwalk, and this year, well, you can see how Mother Nature decided to decorate it. With the Z 8 LCD flipped out (it was -09 at the time) and Z14-24f2.8 @f2.8, I bent over while not slipping on the ice to memorialize this work of art. Though gone the following week with the warming temps, I never forget the beauty of the sculptures born from steam.

The American Bittern is more than two feet in length and yet can hide in almost thin air, standing vertically. It stands amongst the bulrushes as tall as it can be, sways with them when there is a breeze, and its feathers are the colors that make it just disappear. It doesn’t do this sneak up and prey and catch it, I think it does it because it’s fun. I’m sure one of two gets snatched by aerial predators, but it forages like other herons and bitterns. One when caught out in the open, it appears to be like a kid with his fingers caught in the cookie jar. I don’t get them in the lens very often, wish I did. It’s a great bird, the elusive, gorgeous American Bittern.

The process is simply, amazing! We’re coming up on nesting time when birds select with logic only understood by them to build a nest, lay eggs, and raise the next generation. They know the risks their eggs will endure, with heat from the sun being right at the top of the list. And yet, they build nests in the sun. This is partly because of their size and ease of access and escape. So they have developed strategies to deal with it. The parents, for example, lie on the eggs assuring a constent temp for incubation. And when that temp gets too warm, they stand to let a breeze in while shading the eggs. They tenderly turn the eggs as well, in part, to regulate heat. They do this without the aid of an egg timer! Mother Nature is amazing and it knows the sun can be death!

It wasn’t that cold, perhaps 25-27degrees (F). The Bison had no crusties on them, what morning hoar frost that might have formed was long gone in the beaming sun. The bull was part of a small group of Bison moving from one foraging area to another. Even with the warm temps, I was hoping that the exertion might create a couple of big breaths of “steam” once he reached the top. We traveled to the top of the grade and waited. Not only did I need the bull to be breathing hard for any hope of seeing his breath, but I also needed it to not be locked by the other Bison and at the same time, the breath staying in front of his body. Any breath in front of the snow would disappear against the white. I so lucked out! After about a twenty-minute wait, the group came up, and at the end, he was clear, and the breeze took the breath in front of his dark body. He wasn’t mad, just tuckered!

At times, it seems that’s what they are expressing, unless you were there to know the BTS. In this case, this small group of American Bison was on the move in Yellowstone’s Hayden Valley. We came upon them at the bottom of a grade, and we could barely see their breath cause it was 18 degrees, bloody warm! They were heading up a hill though and like any other critter, exerting themselves to climb a hill. I knew when they reached the top, they would be breathing hard. So the snowcoach took us to the top of the grade, where there was a pull off. And there we waited for about thirty minutes. Then they came up and sure enough, they were panting, and the steam was bellowing. But the cow’s eyes seem to same, where have you been?