I’m usually all about trying to get precise focus on my animal subjects, but sometimes I go for something a little more abstract. This shot was taken a few years back on Sanibel Island in Florida at the Ding Darling National Wildlife Refuge (strange name, I know, but one of the best places in the country to photograph birds). The sun had completely set and twilight was fading fast. It was too dark to freeze the action of this roseate spoonbill coming in for a landing so I used the slower shutter speed to my advantage and panned my camera and lens downward with the motion of the bird.

This is a California newt that I came across one day while hiking in the woods outside of San Francisco. They are pretty big for newts and can grow to about eight inches in length. They also happen to be highly toxic if ingested. Fortunately, I have no desire to ingest California, or any other species of newt.

This little guy is an eastern mud turtle. I spotted him one day in Bombay Hook National Wildlife Refuge in Delaware. Mud turtles are semi aquatic, spending the cold months on land (under ground) and the warmer months in the water.

This black bear sow appeared to be posing for the camera just before climbing up the tree to join her pair of year-old cubs. I took this photo a couple of years ago in Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee.

Not much happening up at Rocky Mountain National Park this weekend — just the way it goes sometimes — but other than an occasional elk or deer, I did come across a few creatures, including this golden-mantled ground squirrel. These ground squirrels look a lot like chipmunks, but they are much larger and don’t have stripes on their heads. This is the time of year that they are fattening up for hibernation and as you can see, this guy was quite the little pudge.

There are fifteen different species of marmot in the world. This one is a hoary marmot and it is native to the Pacific northwest. I was hiking in Rainier National Park in Washington when I came across a bunch of these guys scattered throughout the alpine wildflowers. Enjoy the long weekend. I’m off to Colorado and will be back on Tuesday — hopefully with some new creatures to share.

I was up in Bronxville, New York this past weekend at a house party and saw a few black squirrels running around in the back yard. It reminded me of the ones that I used to get at my house in Michigan, including this guy here peeking out of a hole in a tree. Black squirrels are actually a melanistic subgroup of the eastern grey squirrel that carry a mutant black pigment gene. They are common in the Midwestern United States, Ontario, Quebec and parts of the Northeastern United States and Britain.  One theory suggests that they have thrived in these colder areas because their dark fur gives them the advantage of heat retention over grey colored squirrels.

I spent quite a bit of time habituating this nine-banded armadillo on Merritt Island in Florida. Eventually it became comfortable enough with my presence to go about its business of digging frantically for grubs, termites, ants and other insects. Armadillos have very poor eyesight, but a great sense of smell and can detect prey through 8 inches of soil. If you look close, you can see the rotted bits of wood that the armadillo is tossing aside as it digs.

I captured this shot early one morning in Badlands National Park in South Dakota. The pronghorn was standing so still that I was able to take several exposures and then blend them together to hold all the detail in the sky while still exposing for the foreground.

This one is from a trip to Maine a few years back. I was at Baxter State Park when I saw this moose cow in the middle of Sandy Stream Pond. Moose like the nutrient rich vegetation that sits on the bottom of the pond. She was out there for what seemed like an hour, grazing under water and allowing me to get many shots.