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I only see American Pipits when they’re migrating and they’re so cryptic and inconspicuous in their typical habitat\u00a0I’m lucky to see them at all. But when they’re not actually foraging for food on the ground they like to perch on rock piles and that’s where I found several of them yesterday morning. It was nice to get them with a clean background instead of the often cluttered and messy ground.<\/p>\n
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I really enjoy hearing their soothing soft calls<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n For many folks pipits\u00a0might be\u00a0just another LBJ (little brown job) but I think they’re subtly handsome and I was happy to get a few of them in my viewfinder again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n But the most exciting find of the morning was a small herd of mule deer bucks with huge antlers on Antelope Island even though it was a highly frustrating experience for me. They were mostly sidelit and always buried within the vertical\u00a0stalks of moth mullein so I never got any clear shots. And to make things infinitely\u00a0worse\u00a0within\u00a0moments after I stopped for them\u00a0my camera started acting up and intermittently\u00a0wouldn’t autofocus. A few\u00a0choice words\u00a0(actually a lot of them)\u00a0didn’t solve the problem so I missed some of the best opportunities in those rare instances when a huge buck would look my way in decent light.<\/p>\n But I did get some documentary shots that allow us to appreciate the size of those antlers.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Several of the bucks were impressive but this one got most of the attention of my lens because his antlers\u00a0were\u00a0massive and still bloody because he was in the process of losing his velvet which\u00a0was hanging down\u00a0in strands from his rack.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n He was even impressive from behind.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Apparently they were staying in the mullein patches because they were often eating it. This time of year mullein\u00a0typically has only a single yellow flower at the top of the stalk and they were particularly fond of picking off those terminal flowers but they’d also strip off the dried flowers lower on the stalk as this one is doing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I was so damn frustrated and distracted\u00a0by my camera malfunction that I never bothered to actually count the bucks but there were at least six of them, maybe more. Usually they were walking away from me so most of\u00a0the time all I\u00a0could see was\u00a0antlers and assholes (sorry\u00a0about that – must be my rural Montana upbringing again…).<\/p>\n Other than a very restricted trophy hunt the mule deer on Antelope Island are never hunted so some of the bucks develop spectacular racks of antlers in the fall. I don’t have high hopes for the largest of these bucks surviving the hunting season so I was\u00a0happy to document them in their prime.<\/p>\n Last year the coveted deer hunting permit for Antelope Island\u00a0auctioned off for $410,000<\/a>, a world record for mule deer.\u00a0Don’t even get me started about trophy hunting, especially in a state park!<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/09\/american-pipit-9869-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"american-pipit-9869-ron-dudley\\"")
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