Category: Observation

Itty Bitty Wapiti

In honor of my birthday, I th0ught it might be fitting to add another chapter in the “Newborn” series.  I’ve covered newbies from a number of the animal kingdom over the last two months including Bison (link here), Pronghorn (link here) and even Bear (link here).  Today I get to add these..

Elk shot at Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

Isn’t she .. well to be honest, it could be a he but “it” just sounds too cold for such a cutie.  This young Wapiti (or Elk depending on your preference) was photographed while on our trip out to Yellowstone National Park back in May 2013.  I am not studied up on these creatures beyond what is available in Wikipedia and such, so it is impossible for me to tell you how old she might be for sure.  A quick search on the web indicated they give birth in late May and early June.

Elk shot at Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

Our trip out there was the end of May and first few days of June so this one was at most a week and likely less.  They will lose their spots at the end of Summer.   To be honest, this shoot was at first exhilarating and then gave way to some serious concern.  I had climbed up a small hill off the side of the road hoping the higher vantage point might give way to some interesting subjects.  After looking around for bit, a rustling sound came from 50 or so yards away.  After about 5 or 10 minutes of trying to stand as still as possible, this newborn came walking out from among the brush.  That is the part that fits the exhilarating aspect – heart rate goes up, the camera goes up and the finger goes down on the shutter.  5 minutes later my brain kicked in and reminded me this could be a dangerous setting.  Heart rate goes up, finger comes off shutter head swivels.  Wildlife is no different than us – get too near the babies and the moms get understandably anxious – there are plenty of lessons to be had just checking out the Bear tragedies that occur out there from unexpected encounters with cubs.  The fact I was alone only added to the concern.  A few parting shots and I got the hell out of there! (never did see the doe, but can’t imagine it was too far away).

Hit the jump to see more pictures of the Elk of Yellowstone – and even shots of a younger calf!

Continue reading Itty Bitty Wapiti

Icy Drizzle or Shine, That Grizzly’s Mine

Remember when I mentioned the BIG bears were going to be coming up?  Well, I get to make good on that promise!  Yep, today I bring you the heavy hitters in the Ursus category.  As of late, I’ve focused on the American Black Bear because that has been the primary bear encounters we have had in the wild.  The Grizzly below was the only one we encountered on our May 2013 trip

Grizzly Bear Shot at Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

That folks, was one big Grizzly.  It definitely rivals the previous Grizzly we saw out there (link here) and definitely closer.  From a picture perspective, these shots have an odd grainy grey  shine to them.  There is a reason for that – it was SLEETING at that time these were taken.  Not just a bit of sleet either – it was an all out ice downpour that made it quite difficult to get a decent shot.  The Beast doesn’t mind the harsh shooting conditions, but my fingers were freezing and my eyes were taking a beating – a few shots into it I decided to just enjoy the moment.  For those that have seen the remake of the Walter Mitty movie, remember the point where Sean O’Connell declares that he doesn’t like to have the distraction of the camera – that part of the movie always brings me back to times like this.  The point where you stop concentrating on all the technical camera details and focus instead on all the wonders nature has to offer.  The world tends to get distorted looking through the tunnel of big glass.

Grizzly Bear Shot at Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

For those that may not be up with their Grizzly trivial, you might be surprised to know that the term Grizzly  Bear isn’t the term used by the wildlife scientists.  Nope, those hoity-toity elitists use the clearly more boring moniker of North American Brown Bear – dud.   According to our friends over at Wikipedia, the Grizzly name was actually given by Lewis and Clark – referring to it as grisley in reference to the golden/grey hair tips.  Apparently this just had to be corrected in 1815 – could have at least named it something like the Humpty Bear or maybe the much more accurate Skaryazshit Bear.  Did I mention these beasts have males ranging in the 400–800 lb range and females in the 300-400 range?  For reference, Black Bear males have a high end of the scale at 550 and the females are a little closer topping out at 375.  Honey, where is that bear spray!

For snicks I processed out the sleet to give a better view of how these majestic animals look under normal conditions.

Grizzly Bear Shot at Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

It is officially time to close out the bear posts from Yellowstone.  We were blessed with a number of sightings while we were out there and was excited to finally get them posted on the blog for all to share. Don’t worry, I still have a number of different posts coming from Yellowstone.  I need to get through these so I can get to all those other shoots I’ve fallen woefully behind on.

 

Bear With Me

As foretold, I am back with another post featuring a Black Bear.  I am changing it up a bit.  This is not a Bear we encountered at Yellowstone National Park back in May of 2013.  Nope, nothing of the sorts.  This fine specimen was actually taken at the Grand Tetons.
Black Bear shot in the Grand Tetons May 2013

We headed down to the Tetons after our Yellowstone visit on our homeward leg of the vacation.  From a wildlife perspective, the Tetons have never really given us much to put in our tins.  We did get a Moose during one of our visits, but beyond that, that park has rarely offered up anything in the mammal category worth talking about.. much less adding to our gallery.   That changed in a significant way on this trip.

Black Bear shot in the Grand Tetons May 2013

Hit the jump to read an interesting story about this encounter!

Continue reading Bear With Me

That Be a D-Bag

Did I mention I have a lot of bear pictures? No, oh, guess what? I have a lot of bear pictures from our trip out to Yellowstone National Park. So many pictures that it has taken me since May 2013 to get them processed and suitable for viewing. No picture shall be served before it’s time.

Black Bear shot at Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

Just kidding, I didn’t get to processing these shots until the recent holiday break. I ended up getting overwhelmed with other projects that caused the backlog. To help make up for that, I’m trying to blast through these Yellowstone posts as fast as I can – as if you didn’t already noticed this based on the flood of posts that came from that trip.

Black Bear shot at Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

Hit the jump to read a bit more about this bear encounter

Continue reading That Be a D-Bag

More New Year Babies

Today marks the last day of our holiday vacation.  Back to the grind tomorrow morning .. at least until the 18th.  Decided it was probably prudent to get posts out while I still had some free time.  New year, new job role, new organization likely means a lot of time spent getting up to speed on new responsibilities while putting a bow on previous efforts.  All that has a way of digging into my free time – couple that with new Arduino, 3D Printing and Halloween projects and you have a recipe for missing post quotas.  So with that, I bring you another post in the current theme of wildlife babies.

Black Bears shot at Yellowstone National Park May 2013

See that Black Bear in the shot above? – hint, it is the one sporting the cinnamon coloring, but still classified as a Black Bear.  That would be a female (that is my guess based on my memory of the situation in which the shot was taken).  As with the previous batches of posts, this shoot came from the Yellowstone National Park trip back in May 2013.  Things have started to cloud a bit but almost certain that is the female (for reasons that will be apparent in a minute).  Notice how she is intently scanning the woods – very similar to the alertness the Pronghorn doe was employing to keep a watchful eye for her fawn predators (link here).

Turns out she wasn’t the only Black Bear in the area.

Find out how this turns out by hitting the jump!

Continue reading More New Year Babies

The Young and the Vulnerable

2015 is on its last hours.  The sun is retreating for the last time in 2015 making way for a night of celebration as we bring in 2016.  All things considered, I will not miss this year very much and more than relieved to let this year go thanks to a myriad of tough times from family medical discoveries, work stress and the loss of our beloved Kerby.  There were some bright spots like the running production, additions to the bird count and a number of projects I’ve shared throughout the course of the year which will likely be touched up on in my year in review post.  Thought I’d close out this year with a topic I set up from the last post.  Babies!

Pronghorn shot at Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

The Buffalo young carry with them a certain amount of … ummm let’s go with size.  That size gives them a definite advantage in the endless struggle for survival in the wild.  That also means they are surrounded by even larger mothers and fathers capable of inflicting serious paybacks should any predator decide to test their skills.  This is a stark contrast to the life of a Pronghorn.

Pronghorn shot at Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

Hit the jump to see more pictures of the Pronghorn doe and her two cute newborns.

Continue reading The Young and the Vulnerable

A Big Baby

2015 is coming to a close and the weather gods want to make sure they get as much in as they can.  This week has brought us rain, cold, sleet, wind and this morning we were greeted to a blanket of white.  Our friends in and around Peoria have been dealing with power outages and serious tree damage thanks to the ice laden trees being subjected to wicked wind gusts.  Thankfully we have not had any serious fallout.  Just a few branches down and the moose in our Xmas display decided to lay down and take a well deserved rest.  A fitting lead in since this was exactly what some young Bison were doing when we stumbled upon them.
Bison shot in Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

Although we do have the privilege of being able to see Bison at a local wildlife park, these shots were taken back in May of 2015 during our visit to Yellowstone Park.  There has been no shortage of posts covering these huge mammals here at LifeIntrigued.  A trip to Yellowstone put a lot of Bison in the tin back in 2010 (link here) that featured some really young specimens.  A local shoot back in 2011 (link here).  There was also a set taken at Custer State Park and Yellowstone back in 2012 (link here).  As a result, there really isn’t much else I can tell you knew about these creatures.

Bison shot in Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

Hit the jump to view a few more shots of the Yellowstone Bison.

Continue reading A Big Baby

Project Day

Now for something completely different!  It has been about two months since I’ve brought you a project post (that being the 2015 Halloween pumpkin post (link here).  With some extra time on my hands I felt it was time to get some items taken off of my to-do list.  Some recent, some old, some very old.  There are actually  multiple projects summed up in this post.  As an incentive, I’ve had them placed so they are the first thing that I see when I walk into my den.  You would think that would provide enough incentive to get them out of the way … but it didn’t thanks to having too many things on my plate (one of which is Project Auuuurrrnooollddd which completed another phase right before Christmas).

Adhering to a LIFO queue process, the first item on the project list was a recent Christmas gift received from Linda.  This was a set of 2 wind up puzzles called Scorpion Rising.
Project Day

Essentially this consisted of a 3D model that you built on top of a standard wind up coil.  Once assembled you could turn the crank and watch your creation walk.  I figured I could whip these two out in about 15 minutes … until I opened the package and saw what I was dealing with.  There was a trifold hard foam based card that had a series of laser cut outs barely distinguishable by the naked eye.   First action was to go find my reading glasses – the instructions were hard enough to read with their tiny font, but seeing where the cutouts were on the card was basically impossible without them.  The worst thing is there were tiny interior cutouts on the pieces that required me to find a tiny screwdriver set to proper punch them out.

It was pretty easy to see the main concept based on the motor mechanics.  Once wound, there were two pins offset and on different sides from each other which clearly indicated they drove the feet.  Knowing that element helped visualize how the additional pieces should go on.  Getting them actually put together was the hard part.  This puzzle was probably intended for smaller fingers.  It was also apparent no one who manufactured this puzzle ever reviewed the directions due to a major flaw – an ISO view doesn’t help you much if you are putting black pieces on black pieces.  Imagine your high school aptitude tests that show a silhouette of two objects and asked to align two objects to make that basic shape – damn hard.  Here is a quick shot of the directions and the provided puzzle pieces.

Project Day

The other annoying thing is they continued the steps on the back of the sheet but did not replicate the cutout alignment on the card.  This forced me to keep turning the paper over and over again while contemplating what the hell they wanted me to do next.  It didn’t help they opted to position the various steps based on maximizing the paper – translated – the instructions were not in order on the page, well at least not in your standard US left, down, right layout approach.  It was a struggle but the scorpion finally came together (see the first image).  With a pat on the back, the little crank was wound and the Scorpion unleashed on the world… for exactly 4 seconds.  That was the duration of the coil.  The little dude walked for a total of 4 seconds.  Granted it looked cool for that 4 seconds but this dude just took 1.5 hours of my project day.  Based on those results the other scorpion was put away for another rainy day.

Next up was a gift the Makuta’s got me – pretty sure last Xmas or possibly my birthday – can’t remember but as far as a perfect gift for a project loving birder like me .. this was it!

Project Day

Hit the jump to see how this project turns out as well as a third project!

Continue reading Project Day

European Moose

Last post I brought you a set of large mammals shot in Yellowstone National Park back in May 2015.  Those Big Horn Sheep top out in the 310 pound or so range for the males and then about 190 for the females.  Pretty big from a hoofed mammal perspective, but definitely not the top end of the inhabitants at our first national park.  Today we push that scale a little higher with these common residents.

Elk shot in Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

These Elk (we’ll get to the whole name thingy in a bit) tip the scales between 500 and 530 for the cows and 700 to 730 pounds for the bulls.  The predators of the animal world would need to be pretty hungry (and desperate) to take on a mature bull.  Something tells me they would be calling for an ambulance to pick up the carnage should they get slammed with a full rack.

Elk shot in Yellowstone National Park in May 2013

Speaking of racks, these shots are of Elk that are still in their velvet stages of their antler growth.  These creatures are pretty common out in that particular region and one doesn’t come back from a trip without a few tins full of Elk frames.  They’ve actually been featured on this blog several times now (link here and here).  Note, the latter link has some of the most gorgeous antler racks (qualifier added for obvious reasons) I’ve seen on these beasts.  From those posts you can tell the transformation from the velvet stages to the mature antler sets.

Hit the jump to see a bunch more pictures of the Elk!

Continue reading European Moose

They Grow ’em Big Out There

If you haven’t noticed yet, Linda and I have a few days off from work to enjoy the holidays.  What better way to celebrate extra free time than cranking out posts!  This month I was able to bring you little birds, big birds, big squirrels and bigger squirrels.  Now it is time to step up the weight a bit and bring you some of the larger shoots from the Yellowstone National Park trip back in May 2015.

Mountain Goats shot on Yellowstone National Park trip in May 2013

Today we feature Big Horn Sheep.  I did some quick reading up on them to see if I could accurately tell you whether these were all rams are ewes seeing as none of the subjects I opted to use in this post have the more telltale feature of the full curved horns.  The females also possess horns but as stated by our friends over at Wikipedia, they are not as prominent and only slightly curved compared to their adult male counterparts.

Mountain Goats shot on Yellowstone National Park trip in May 2013

Hit the jump to see a lot more pictures of the Big Horn Sheep from Yellowstone!

Continue reading They Grow ’em Big Out There