I have many more photos from Botswana to post, but thought I’d break it up a little with a shot today from Yellowstone. This was taken on my most recent “spring” trip to the park. It was very cold for late May — even for Yellowstone — but the weather provided for some nice views of the landscape and the animals within it. It was still very early in the morning when I saw this bison mother and calf in the northern part of the park near the Wyoming/Montana border.
This will be the last post for a while as I head to Botswana tomorrow for a two week safari. In the meantime, thought I’d post one more polar bear from Seal River in Manitoba, Canada. This guy started sliding across the ice and grabbed at his leg as if he could somehow stop the sliding. Enjoy, and see you in two weeks with a bunch of new creatures.
This newborn elephant seal seems a bit disinterested as its mother delivers some sort of a lecture. I was just north of San Simeon, California this past winter and newborn pups and their mothers seemed to be everywhere.
Unlike animals with horns, those with antlers grow and then shed a new set every year. It was the end of May when I photographed this male elk in Yellowstone. His antlers will continue to grow throughout the summer and then in the fall, the velvet skin that you see here will be shed to reveal the hard bone like material underneath. The elk will retain these velvet-less antlers until they are eventually dropped altogether in the winter.
A bison walks along a shallow ridge line in Yellowstone National Park. This guy was taking his time catching up to the rest of the herd that had already descended to the far side of that small hill. Earlier a few had stopped to drink from the lake.
I didn’t post yesterday because I was stuck at the airport in Bangor, Maine due to bad weather. I went there to photograph puffins on Saturday morning and then drove up to Baxster State Park in search of moose. Unfortunately, it rained all day on Sunday and the moose were nowhere to be found. I decided to go for a hike anyway and just as I was about ready to give up and head for home, I stumbled across this little fawn. It must have been born the night before because I was in the exact same spot the previous evening and it wasn’t there. The mother wasn’t anywhere in sight, but hopefully was just hiding someplace nearby waiting for me to leave.
I didn’t see too many pronghorn on this most recent trip to Yellowstone, but there were a few out and about. In this photo, you can see the difference between the male and the female. The males have the prominent pronged horns whereas the females also have horns, but they are much smaller and often times barely visible.
This duck is called a Barrow’s goldeneye. It is a male of the species — the female having a more brownish head and lacking the white patch on the side of the face. You can’t really tell due to the limited depth of field, but that’s the Grand Teton mountain range in the background.
There were bison with newborn calves all over the Lamar Valley of Yellowstone. This youngster was getting a nice eye bath from its mother.
