This Tom gobbles thanks that he made it through Thanksgiving unscathed. The Thanksgiving he’s gobbling about was actually 2016 and I took this portrait of him in June 2017 in Madera Canyon, Arizona using my Nikon D5 and Nikkor 600mm f/4 lens. I’m thankful I’m not lugging that beast around anymore (although I have taken some of my favorite images with it) and I look forward to capturing many fabulous images with my new (and significantly lighter——5 1/2 pounds lighter!) Nikkor Z600PF lens.
As sunrises go, Caddo Lake sunrises can be over the top sensational. And, after experiencing the intense reds from our second day there earlier this month, I voiced disappointment in the more subdued colors from our third morning there. When I asked to trade places in the boat on our last morning, I took a bit of a ribbing about it, as if 18 inches further forward in the boat could possibly make a difference in the color. In my defense, I actually asked to trade so I could be in the front with an unobstructed view of the lake and laughed off the good natured ribbing I took from my companions. However, on that last day, there was almost no color in the sky. And, now, a couple of weeks removed from the trip and a second look back at sunrise images from the third morning, I was struck by how much color there actually was. And, the color is intensified and expanded because of the reflections of the sunrise in the water. I don’t know why I could have possibly felt disappointment in this sunrise. It is subdued but it is every bit as spectacular as the other sunrises we experienced there.
When they’re less than a year old, young Bighorn Sheep are called lambs. It was fun to watch the lambs bounding across the meadow and playing with each other.
During the rut, Bighorn Sheep rams vie for dominance in the herd, the older, larger rams generally dominating. The confrontation seems to start with a nudge, then a circling dance. It doesn’t always result in a clashing of heads and horns but it is always fascinating to watch their intricate choreography.
A Bighorn ewe looks up from her breakfast of grasses growing around the sagebrush. I didn’t see any of the sheep eating sage while they were standing in the midst of it although they will eat it when the grasses are no longer available to them.
With his massive curled horns, this Bighorn Sheep ram is one of the big boys. The rams stick together, crossing the sage covered meadow after descending from the cliffs where they spend the night in safety from predators. They show up in small groups of four or five, reminding me of the “cool kids” in high school who stuck together and bullied their way around the halls at school. The rams harass the ewes and occasionally face off with other rams and crack heads in battles for dominance. The right curl on this ram shows a little brooming, the result of wear and tear over the years. After grazing on sedges and other plants, they lay down to rest or nap. Gnats swarm as we took his portrait. I attached the Nikon 2X teleconverter to my Nikkor 600mmPF lens for this portrait.
Yesterday was our last day in Yellowstone National Park. The Pronghorn herd that greeted us each morning as we entered the park and each evening as we left, were grazing on their customary meadows. One doe climbed a knoll and stood atop it and posed for us. I like to think of it as a farewell.
A couple of Bighorn Sheep rams didn’t object to a young lamb as they foraged yesterday afternoon along the Old Yellowstone Trail Road that parallels the Yellowstone River outside Yellowstone National Park. The little one walked away from its mother and joined the two rams munching alongside them.
Rocky Mountain Bighorn Sheep! They are among my favorite mammals to photograph and a fall trip to Yellowstone National Park is the time to see them. In the mornings they come down from their nighttime safe place, the high rocky crags in the Gallatin Range, along the Old Yellowstone Trail just outside Yellowstone National Park. They descend to the meadow to munch grasses and then proceed to the river to drink. A group of mature rams hung together, jousting a bit and feeding together until one by one they crossed the road and lay down in the field across from us where we stood with our tripods and long lenses, eager to capture their behavior and expressions. When this ram lay down to rest, he looked at us as if saying, “inquiring minds want to know.” I suppose it is an odd thing to witness, a half dozen people standing behind long lenses on tripods, photographing their every movement. It’s their world and if we act appropriately, they accept us in it. Yesterday, they crossed within a few feet of us. What a thrill it is to know that we have behaved properly and that they tolerate our presence.
The first day of “Yellowstone in Search of Wolves” was a real hoot. We stopped for sunrise along the Yellowstone River on US 89 and Moose heard and then saw a young Great Horned Owl. We heard a second and followed its calls into the wooded area at a place Google maps called Grey Owl Fishing Access. Yesterday it should have been called Great Horned Owl Fishing Access. There were lots of twigs and leaves that partially obscured the owl but having the lens wide open made them disappear and my brand new Nikkor Z600 f/6.3 proved it was up to the task.
Words cannot describe this: another glorious sunrise on Caddo Lake last week.
The weathered, hand painted wooden sign nailed to a Bald Cypress tree in front of the dilapidated structure on the edge of Caddo Lake near Uncertain, Texas known as Dick and Charlie’s Tea Room reads “House Rules 1. There ain’t none. 2. There never was none 3.There ain’t gonna be none. Local lore says this place was rocking during Prohibition because it was in a “wet county” so people in the “dry” county across the river ventured over to imbibe. The real story published a couple of years ago in a local newspaper isn’t quite as romantic. I’d rather believe the local lore.
In the mornings, as we headed east on Caddo Lake to savor and photograph the sunrise, the water on the lake was smooth as glass——most of the time. Sometimes a bass boat with an anxious fisherman powered by creating a huge rooster tail and lots of waves. But, the ripples in this image were created by our own boat as Captain Rich turned it around to head another direction well after the sun had risen and most of the deep reds of the Caddo Lake sunrise had disappeared. The reflections of the sun and the clouds in the ripples created a completely different look.
Its fall and the foliage of the Bald Cypress trees on Caddo Lake in Texas have turned the color of Burnt Sienna. Caddo Lake is home to many different types of water fowl including Great Egrets like this one flying to the shallow edge of the lake to hunt.
The sunrise at Caddo Lake was vastly different each day. This is from our second morning there. I think it was the most spectacular sunrise I’ve ever seen. The colors were so intense and so vivid it seemed almost otherworldly.
Garlands of Spanish Moss cling to the branches of Bald Cypress trees and cascade almost to the water in Caddo Lake, a maze of slow-moving bayous, wetlands and backwaters. Spanish Moss, which is neither Spanish nor moss but a type of bromeliad, is ubiquitous in Caddo Lake and in much of the Southeastern part of the US. In my mind, it defines the bayou along with the Bald Cypress trees to which it clings. Yesterday morning, Captain Rich took us to a part of the lake we hadn’t visited and there were far more birds than in the parts of the lake we saw in our first two days here. Great Egrets, White Ibis, and Great Blue Herons were everywhere. Great Blue Herons would pose on posts for a brief time as we drifted up to and past them but when Captain Rich shifted gears with a ker-thump, off they flew. This GBH posed on a fallen branch, not a marker post, and with the drapes of Spanish Moss as a backdrop, it is the perfect representation of a bird of the bayou.
Uncertain, Texas is the gateway to Caddo Lake, that hauntingly beautiful place filled with a watery forest of Cypress whose exotic silhouettes and their reflections dominate the morning sunrise. Uncertain is certainly the place to be if you’re hoping to see the fiery colors that fill the sky and that spread across the water as the sun slowly lifts above the horizon. If you’re lucky, like we were yesterday morning, the stunning colors will last seemingly forever, and even deepen, until every last hint of red finally vanishes. I didn’t think the sunrise could be any more stunning or breathtaking than on our first morning here. I was wrong. I have barely caught my breath again.
Sunrise on Caddo Lake, with its bayous, wetlands, and ancient cypress forest, is spectacular. The lake straddles the border between Texas and Louisiana. We’re staying in Louisiana but our daily boat excursions are on the Texas side of the lake. We launch with Captain Rich well before sunrise when it is still dark. Yesterday morning, there were scattered clouds but remants of the moon and quite a few stars were still visible at our 6AM launch. The temperatures were mild and so was a pleasure to sit aboard the pontoon boat and photograph the gorgeous views surrounding us. The intense color of the sky remained well after the sun appeared above the distant hills so I continued to shoot the sunrise after it rose above the horizon.
We’ve given nicknames to many of the Kodiak Brown Bears we’ve watched over the years. Each visit we seem to encounter a bear with some unique (to us) behavior patterns. Snorkel Bear was a huge mother with two COYS (cubs of the year) whose preferred method of catching salmon was to wade into the deep part of the river at the bend, dip under the water, and then watch for and capture salmon in her huge clawed paws. We rarely saw her out of the water and her cubs were not yet old enough to venture into the water so they watched and waited from the shoreline, usually hidden in the undergrowth. Snorkel Bear waited patiently for us to drift by, then she dipped her head under the water, emerging seconds later with a fish clutched in her paws. Sometime she ate it and proceeded to snorkel again. Occasionally, she’d share with her cubs. But her cubs seemed to be thriving and she kept fishing for them. I hope we’ll get to see them next spring.
The endearing Kodiak Brown Bear that we watched several afternoons as we motored back to camp in our boats, the one that draped itself over a shelf along the river’s edge, up off the shoreline but in a position to watch all that passed by, moved to the water’s edge on our last evening there. It slowly waddled to the edge of the water and began to sip from the river, watching us as we drifted by. Revisiting these photographs, only a few weeks away from seeing them in the flesh (the fur?) I can’t wait to return to see how they’re faring. Such magnificent creatures.