I fully expected to be skunked by the lack of birds or poor light or both but this trip to Antelope Island was a little better than I anticipated. We actually had good light until near the end of the morning and we found a few interesting critters.
There are no easy answers for the dilemma of barbed wire and its effects on wildlife and even domestic animals, especially if you’re a farmer or rancher. But we can certainly improve our track record if we realize there’s a problem. A big one.
In my opinion this is the cutest baby mammal of any species I’ve ever photographed.
Critters use sunflowers for a variety of reasons. They don’t have to be in bloom to be useful to birds and wildlife but when they are they sure brighten up some of my photos. When they aren’t they allow me to photograph feeding behavior like I did yesterday.
In nature photography sometimes hard work and perseverance pay off and sometimes they don’t. This time my results were mixed.
“Don’t mess with Porky” was one of the early lessons I learned growing up on the Montana farm.
We’ll get to the critter in a minute. Normally any more news on my finger injury isn’t something I’d cover on my blog but the healing process has been so unexpectedly fast on such a significant injury and because I reported it here when it happened I decided to share evidence of why I’m so surprised and pleased with it.
A few of the birds on Antelope Island are still in the late stages of nesting, including this Lark Sparrow and a female Bullock’s Oriole I saw at a distance feeding a recent fledgling.
Yesterday I was very lucky to find these pups with their mother outside their burrow because youngsters are weaned at 22 days of age and their mother almost completely abandons them after weaning. Then they’re on their own so they disperse to establish their own territories. And try to survive.
