Wildlife, landscape and weather photography
When you weigh close to 2,000 pounds and standing almost six feet tall, finding a good hiding place on the Great Plains is not easy. For you and I, tall, thick grass would easily conceal us but for these guys, it isn’t quite so easy. 😉
This was kind of a fun, different view of our national mammal. This big boy was lying down in the grass, peering just over the top of the grass right at me. I imagined him saying to himself, “If I don’t move, he won’t be able to spot me.”
It is birthing season for the bison and the mamas at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge have been busy. As of a week ago, 13 calves had been welcomed into the herd so far.
On Sunday, only one new mom was willing to let me get pics but that is okay – it was quite a cutie and already seemed to have a handle on how to pose for pictures. Needless to say, a very fitting image to share on Tatanka Tuesday.
Somehow I think he would fair worse with this bison bull than taking on that little bird! 😀
I had a ton of fun watching this coyote as it patrolled the prairie this past weekend. More than once it walked right by the bison but they paid it no attention.
Certainly, one coyote poses no threat to a full-grown bison and I am sure the coyote knew better than to try anything. If there had been a pack of them, then I suspect the bison might have reacted differently. As is, the coyote was simply walking by and ended up on the opposite side of the road where it dined on a cache of some sort of meat it had stashed.
A pretty cool capture of this massive king of the Great Plains on a frosty winter morning late last month.
As usual, the bull had its nose to the ground grazing most of the time. A frost had coated the landscape and the bison itself with temperatures below freezing. As the sun started peeking over the horizon, he lifted his head, looking right at the glowing orb and lighting up his face casting a beautiful glow on its horns and in his eyes. Definitely a capture of our national mammal that I really like.
Check out this bad boy! Taken a few weeks ago on a very cold morning on the Colorado plains. He was large and in charge and he definitely seemed to know it. His fur had a light coating of frost on it and the filtered sunlight of the rising sun really lit him up beautifully. Have to say, this must be one of my favorite bison pics I have taken and is definitely worthy of sharing for Tatanka Tuesday.
Bison bulls battle in the snow. It has been a long time since I have been able to witness this action. Cold weather usually makes the wildlife active and this past Saturday, these two younger bulls were having a lot of fun sparring.
For more than a half hour, the two pushed, shoved and stabbed at each other going back and forth. That allowed me time to switch to video and grab a some cool action. The second sequence about 40 seconds in is closer.
It isn’t the rut so this was most likely just “playing” but goodness, it looked pretty darned rough and painful to me!
It has been a long time since I have been able to witness this action between these beasts of the Great Plains.
Cold weather usually makes the wildlife active and this past Saturday, these two younger bulls were having a lot of fun sparring in the winter chill. For more than a half hour, the two pushed, shoved and stabbed at each other going back and forth. That yielded me hundreds of fun pics of the action.
It isn’t rut season so this was most likely just “playing” but goodness, it looked pretty darned rough and painful to me!
A fresh six inches of snow and morning temps in the single digits. Looks like fun, right? Hoar frost covered the foliage – and the bison – making for some pretty cool (pun intended) captures.
This big fella was, of course, unbothered by the weather conditions this past Saturday morning. He and his buddies were just nosing the snow aside and enjoying breakfast like normal while I sat nice and toasty inside my truck.
Truly an impressive beast and worthy of being featured on Tatanka Tuesday.
Quite the scene yesterday and while the pictures aren’t very good, they tell a story of life, and death, in nature.
I had stopped to photograph a pair of bald eagles off in a distant tree and as I focused on them, movement below caught my attention. A bison had died and other creatures were taking full advantage of the meal.
The show was at least a quarter of a mile away so these images are rather poor quality and highly cropped but they are worth sharing. They depict a scene that is played out everywhere in nature every day and while it may not be pleasant to see, it is part of the proverbial circle of life.
The bison’s death, while sad, serves a purpose, giving a much-needed winter meal for many other creatures, helping to sustain them during the harshest of seasons on the Great Plains. The bison likely died of natural causes. Coyotes have been documented taking down calves, but a full grown bison like this would be too big of a target for them.
Finally! New Year’s Eve / Day brought much-needed snowfall to the Colorado Front Range, our first decent storm of the season.
Normally the cold and snow would make the bison pretty active but on the day after the storm, they were quite mellow and didn’t do anything particularly interesting. Off in the distance, a small part of the herd was grazing.
Heat vapors from the warming sun bouncing off the snow distorted things quite a bit but still made for a pleasant scene.
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