In Focus Daily

Three iconic buttes of Monument Valley are West Mitten Butte, East Mitten Butte, and Merrick Butte, seen above, left to right, with Mitchell Mesa behind West Mitten Butte. I wake up every morning to a view of those three buttes, but not this view. It is amazing to see how the look of each mesa and butte changes as you drive the loop. We drove to Ford’s Point lookout which is one of the iconic movie locations that John Ford used to film a number of John Wayne movies. This is the view that John Wayne must have had of these buttes.

Sunrise at Monument Valley is always spectacular and yesterday morning was not exception. The marvelous thing about shooting sunrise here is that we’re able to shoot from our third floor balconies at The View inside the Monument Valley Navajo Tribal Park. In my “view” it’s the only hotel with “view” in its name that actually lives up to the hype. This is East Mitten seconds before the sun poked above the horizon.

On my last evening in Montana, we visited the Ravalli County Airport where helicopters fighting the Moose Creek Fire were returning at day’s end. This Skycrane heavy-lift helicopter, which sucks up massive amounts of water from lakes and drops it on wildfires, came in while we were there. I looked up the tail number, which is closer to the nose on this aircraft, and discovered that it is more than 50 years old. Glad it’s still serving.

Sundown at Rattlesnake Butte a couple of weeks ago in Montana.

I couldn’t help fawning over Bambi when I was in Montana visiting Moose and Sharon. In fact, there were three Bambis, a set of twins and a singleton.

What fascinates me about woodpeckers is how they use their tails to support themselves. Those tail feathers are very strong and stiff to help hold their weight against a tree trunk while they pound hard with their heavy beaks. According to the American Bird Conservancy, woodpeckers’ tails act as a third leg along with their feet (two toes forward, two toes backward), sort of a tripod support that helps with shock absorption and braces them when they hammer trees with their beaks. This is a Hairy Woodpecker, using its tail to brace against the Ponderosa Pine on Moose’s ranch last week.

Montana wasn’t all smoky sunrises and silky waterfalls. We did come across a small flock of young Cedar Waxwings along the river’s edge. They were flying after hatching nymphs on the surface of the water where rafts of algae and water plants floated. These two were closely watching the water’s surface and did not seem too worried about our approach to photograph them.

A 90 second exposure calmed the rumbling Great Falls at Ryan Dam in Montana, smoothing them into a silky flow.

The week I spent in Great Falls, Montana created some of the most spectacular sunrises and sunsets I’ve ever seen. We were at Ryan Dam photographing the falls and I looked behind me just after 6 AM to see godbeams streaking out from behind a hilltop as the sun was beginning to rise. Wow.

More than one hundred years ago, these windows on the powerhouse at Ryan Dam first looked over the largest falls in Great Falls, Montana. Today, the powerhouse is still in use but, as in many old buildings, many of the windows panes are missing.

Another smoky sunrise in Montana.

Wildfires are raging throughout the west and the skies have been filled with smoke most days in Montana in the past ten days. After dinner on my last evening in Montana, Moose took me to the airport in Hamilton where the helicopters that are working the fires come in to refuel. In this image, the Price Valley Heli-repellers from Idaho, head back to Missoula after stopping briefly to refuel their helicopter. They will refuel themselves as well, before returning to the front. This is one of the few times I’ve photographed flying aircraft and this was a particular challenge because I was hand holding my Nikon Z8 and Nikkor Z180-600 at a shutter speed of 1/25 of a second so that the rotors would blur. Making sure the rest of the image didn’t blur was the challenge.

The sun hides behind the clouds as it dips in the sky in Great Falls, Montana. The intense red is created in part by the smoke in the air from the wildfires burning in Montana, Washington, and Oregon.

After misidentifying a Pine Siskin in my post two days ago (I posted a photo of a female House Finch and called it a Pine Siskin) I edited the title to say Pseudo Pine Siskin and edited the post to correct my error. This is a photo of three real Pine Siskins in a Tamarack Tree, not exactly a pine tree but related.

Such an idyllic moment. Yesterday morning, the White-tailed doe visited Moose’s ranch with her twins and her brother, a young buck. I was already on the deck watching them and Moose tossed an apple to the doe and the buck. One of the fawns reached up to get a sample from Mom.

I’m spending a few days with my friends Moose and Sharon in Montana. Yesterday morning, I relished the peaceful sanctity of their ranch, as I sat on the deck, savoring a cup of strong coffee, enjoying the bird songs, and watching the birds. This pseudo Pine Siskin (it’s actually a House Finch) made it obvious why they got their name.

Much of our travel this past week in Montana has involved crossing the Missouri River as it snakes across the state. The Hardy Bridge is one of the many bridges that cross the river.

What a gorgeous sunrise yesterday morning at Tower Rock. We wondered if Lewis and Clark had the good fortune to witness such glory, as their expedition, known as the Corps of Discovery, came to Tower Rock (it was behind me so not in the image) 221 years ago in July of 1805. This was the place in their journey of discovery that they left the plains, familiar terrain, and entered the Rocky Mountains.

As the sun was setting yesterday, the Rocky Mountains were obscured by smoke from wildfires burning in Oregon, Washington, Idaho, probably parts of California and even some in Montana. Not only could we see the smoke, we could smell it and were inhaling it as we shot.

The Coyotes at Ferrari Pond seem to have moved their family to the other side of the Salt Pond. They are a bit further out than they used to be. Only one was out Sunday morning, lazing in the morning sun but too far to get a decent shot. I took this a couple of days before as this Coyote sniffed its way back to the old haunts before joining up with the family in the new digs.