As I mentioned in a recent post, I haven’t had much luck getting pics of spring babies. Thankfully I appear to be putting that behind me, in part due to this cute one.

This bison calf was moving along with the herd as they relocated from one area to one more public. It wanted to be a bit shy, staying behind mom while watching me watching it.

Native Americans call bison Tatanka, a Lakota word that translated means “bull buffalo.” In May 2016 the bison became the official mammal of the United States, a fitting and long overdue honor.

My recent visits to the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge near Denver, Colorado have not been particularly fruitful when it comes to photographing the bison.

They currently have the herd cordoned off on the western half of the refuge which severely limits the photo opportunities as most of the area is inaccessible.

On a recent morning though, one of the big bulls had made himself available for pictures. He was quite close so I opted for a tight crop and a conversion to black and white.

One of the things I was most looking forward to photographing this past weekend were the four new baby #bison. While I did get that chance, the mamas were keen on keeping their distance so I never got a close look at them. Nevertheless, seeing the new red dogs was fun and I hope to get a closer look here soon.

The last couple of weeks have brought unseasonably cold conditions to the Colorado Front Range and with it, some snow. During a recent storm, the bison opted to just lie low and wait it out, as this big boy was doing. Kind of a shelter-in-place for the animal world, much like we humans are going through now.

While this image was taken just a couple of weeks ago, you could totally imagine this being 200 years ago. The undisturbed grasses of the plains, the snow-capped Rocky Mountains and bison grazing freely, unhindered and unharmed by man.

Of course over the past 200 years we did a lot of harm to the land and to the animals that call it home. We are slowly learning and working to repair that damage, an example of that is within this image.

Once driven to the brink of extinction, bison have made a fantastic recovery and land such as that at the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge that we had poisoned is being restored to its original state. There is still have work to do but we are making strides and for that I am thankful.

This big fella definitely was taking a big whiff of the women. 😉 

Taken a couple of weeks ago, my photo outing wasn’t particularly eventful that day. Wildlife was not very active and overcast skies made for somewhat dreary pics.

I spent a good bit of the time with the bison herd as they were close to the road and at least providing some entertainment. This big bull was one of the main features and he seemed to always find himself surrounded by the cows. Not a bad situation for him I reckon!

These two provided some fun entertainment this past Sunday. They were somewhat young so not particularly impressive in size but they did do a good bit of sparring. All I can hear is my mom saying, “You’ll poke your eye out with that thing!”  😀

Ah, yes, this is Colorado and a great image for Tatanka Tuesday!

A fresh blanket of snow, the bison herd tromping through the fresh white stuff and those gorgeous Rocky Mountains in the background. I love being able to see scenes like this!

The previous day saw a decent little snowstorm move through and in its wake, we experienced a gorgeous – but cold – day on the Front Range. The herd was moving to new grazing grounds and the bright white snow really helped to light up their brown, winter coats