Category: Wildlife

Cuteness Overload in a Tree (COiaT)…by Brad Marks

Welcome to the New Year everyone! I am getting a late start mostly due to lack of consistent connectivity…that and the fact the birding counter reset to 0 a few days ago. If you are a birder, you know that the beginning of the year is the BEST time to bird as practically every thing you see with wings is a check! As for the connectivity, we are currently in Big Bend National Park and this place is HUGE. For a reference point, the road from one end of the park to the other is ~43 miles. The park itself is over 800,000 acres of which a large number of those produce a slashed circle on your cell phone bar. I’ll get more into this park in future posts, but right now (while I have a few bars of signal) I want to get you to something I kind of let out of the bag in our Christmas greeting. Brad and Jan had the opportunity to explore “Down Under” late last year and I wanted to start off 2026 with one of their observations.

You are in for a real treat, take it away Brad!…

Sometimes, photo assignments turn out to be vacations in disguise.  Shhh, don’t tell Intrigued HQ; Jan and I sold this trip on being a four-week long photo adventure, promising to bring back thousands of photos.  Well, we actually did bring back tens of thousands of photos.  We also had a very nice vacation along the way in a spectacular part of the world.  This trip/vacation/assignment ticked several life goal boxes: crossing the equator, crossing the International Date Line, crossing the Pacific Ocean, visiting a new continent, seeing the Indian Ocean, and seeing unique wildlife.  You get the idea.

To maximize our coverage area and create the most photo opportunities, on our first full day down under we signed up for a guided tour leaving Melbourne early in the morning.  After picking up the other tour participants, the guide and driver named Brian (at least it will be for this story), gave us an overview of the agenda for the day.  Once everyone was onboard, and he thought most of the tour group was awake (the tour started before sunrise), he asked if there were any goals we had for the trip.  Waiting a few seconds to see if anyone else suggested a goal, I blurted out mine for the day.  No one else was really awake it seemed because there we no other suggestions.  I realized later that of the nine people in the tour minibus, there were only four English speaking participants.  Brian mentioned something about my goal being very nice, but that it had a very low likelihood of being achieved for reasons listed later.

Several hours into the tour, Brian had begun to warm up to the group and suggested we might be able to meet my stated goal after all. As we approached a small bridge over a stream in the middle of nowhere, literally, he slowed dramatically.  Dozens of tourists had parked haphazardly on the road and were staring up into the trees.  Brian said that when there are a bunch of people pointing up in a tree in the middle of nowhere it’s usually a sign of something high up in the trees.  Impeccable logic.

He didn’t want to add to the dangerous parking situation so he continued driving across the small bridge to park at the first safe available place.  The road was elevated above the surrounding fields by several feet allowing the creek/river to flow under the bridge with ease.  As Brian opened the sliding door on our touring minibus, Jan hopped off first and spotted a brown lump in the tree in front of us at eye level. 

Koala captured by Brad and Jan Marks while in Australia

How cute is that! – Hit the jump to read more about this adorable creature.

Continue reading Cuteness Overload in a Tree (COiaT)…by Brad Marks

2025 Comes to an End

I sit here alone at the Intrigued HQ. The staff is home enjoying the holidays with their families, there is a warm glow from the single light above my desk, a completed stack of performance reviews sit in the outbox, a nice cup of peppermint white hot chocolate steams by my open laptop and the pad of paper with the end of year to-do list only has one item left unchecked – a final post for the year. Looking back, this has been quite a year. So many bright spots along with some struggles I would just soon forget. On the positive side, I am once again very proud of our posting efforts this year. A quick count shows 77 total posts for 2025 (including this one) with Brad bringing you 23 of those from his (and Jan’s) work in the field. Each of those take a significant amount of time from the captures in the field, image processing, storyline, editor review, legal review and the general administration to get them out to you – a heartfelt thank you to everyone that gets this Intrigued gear to rotate.

Then there are the tougher aspects of this year. Although the ankle break technically happened in 2024, the surgery and recovery (ongoing) took up a bulk of this year. Duration wise, this is the worst injury I’ve had to deal with in my lifetime – which is saying a lot as I have had my share of mishaps. As an update to this saga, my surgeon gave me the green light to start running on flat surfaces. He tapped the brakes on the trail running and wants me to hold off 6 weeks before that level of stress. Bittersweet on that as I already had my trail shoes sitting by the door for when I came home. Swapped those out for the pavement shoes and now have a few sloooow runs under my belt. Pain..some…endurance base..atrophied…a huge smile on my face – DEFINITELY. Still a long way to go, but it is a hard to put into words the feeling of freedom that was felt.

And that feeling of freedom is exactly what led me to pick this particular series for the last post of the year.

Red-Crowned Parrots found flying over Estero Llano Grande State Park, Weslaco, TX in March 2024

Hit the jump to learn more about these tropical sounding residents of south Texas.

Continue reading 2025 Comes to an End

Rip It, Roll It and Punch it

Good news everybody…and much to my surprise… we had a fairly non-eventful staff party for a change, well at least by Intrigued standards. No police, no ambulances, no fire trucks and the always present neighborhood complaints in the inbox were minimal – clearly we are starting to show our age around here. I am sure Brad’s idea to warn our legal department that they were on double secret probation for previous year’s stunts was a tremendous help in keeping things somewhat under control. Note, the clever individual who managed to pick the lock on our copier room will be found, forced to write bad checks and required to disinfect the copier glass.

Needless to say, things are quickly coming to close around here. There are only a few in the office these days mainly working on year end expense reports and finishing up their proposals for next year’s field assignments. I should be working on performance reviews, but I find that is NOT advantageous to the staff this soon after the party sooooo……let’s feature another find at the Port Aransas Jetty.

Sea Turtle found on Port Aransas South Jetty, TX in March 2024

“Let go…and see where the current, ” I mean jump “takes you“.

Continue reading Rip It, Roll It and Punch it

Fish Guzzling

We are winding down here at Intrigued as the last of the 2025 events are slowly coming to a close. Yesterday I finished up the last of the crown work which ended up being far more painful than expected thanks to the temporary cap somehow welding to my tooth – have I mentioned before how much I absolutely abhor dental work – just point to a dental drill bit and I’ll give up my mother in an interrogation. Fingers crossed later today I get released by the ankle surgeon, so I can fully enjoy tonight’s Intrigued staff gathering – trust me, you want to be fully healthy before attending one of those parties – the weak are culled ha. That just leaves Linda’s family Christmas gathering and then ours before the trek to warmer weather. Hopefully we will be able to make a few more posts before we stop the presses and turn the lights out on this injury riddled year.

Before I get into the real reason you are here, thought I would pat ourselves on the back and note that last post from Brad marked our 1,000th post here on our wildlife sister site (the Intrigued mothership is currently at 1,533 – even a few of those were lost as we transitioned to the WP service from our own servers). A big thanks to all the staff that got us to this point!

Okay, since we are winding “down”, decided it would be appropriate to go with another “down” of sorts…this one being down the hatch.

Double-Crested Cormorant swallowing fish found at Port Aransas South Jetty, TX in March 2024

I think you already know where this is going, but hit the jump to confirm!

Continue reading Fish Guzzling

Finally Blue…by Brad Marks

Greetings from the tundra – well, the Illinois tundra that is. We got a good 7 inches of snow yesterday on top of around 4 inches earlier in the week. My driveway looks like a classic West Point defensive position now being outlined by a 3 foot hardened ridge. The worst however is the temps came screaming down, bottoming out around -7F early this morning – windchills in the -24F range. If there was any hesitation to head south, that has been completely discarded. First a few more events to take care of. We had my families Christmas gathering just before this latest storm hit, Intrigued has their party coming up (lord help us ha), we have Linda’s family’s Christmas, then our Christmas and some final appointments to get out of the way first – one being hopefully the final release from my ankle surgeon (Bri needs to run). While I tend to all the logistics involved with those gatherings, I am going to have Brad take the helm and bring you another one of his adventures out east. Take care everyone, stay warm and may your hearts be merry this Christmas season.

Take it away Brad…

Being almost, but not quite, new to birding, I tend to trust the names of the birds to be descriptive.  The more Jan and I go out capturing our feathered friends on “film”, the more I learn the names may or may not describe the bird at all.  Or the characteristic described can only be seen when the bird has met its demise and is splayed out on a display board somewhere.

One of our first encounters with wading birds was in South Carolina a few years ago, we took photos of everything.  It was the first time I came within 19 photos of filling up a very large memory card (at least that’s what the counter on my camera told me) successfully squeezing over 3,700 images onto the card that day.  Downloading the photos later took quite a bit of time, as did recharging the camera batteries.  Jan and I were shooting from about 8 am until 4:30pm.  We weren’t shooting nonstop, but we did take nearly 7,500 photos from a single day’s outing spread across three cards.  This was way before Jan got her 200-500mm lens and was stuck using my 70-200mm with a 1.4x TC attached.  I was still using a monopod, which helped hold up the 200-500mm on my gripped D300; it does get heavy after a while. 

Sorting and categorizing the photos once we were home was a marathon event.  I ended up doing the sorting twice because I was only casually identifying the birds that looked different from the ones in the next set of images.  That’s when I learned that many of the juvenile versions look completely different from the adults.  Their names also do NOT help in the slightest in identifying juveniles.  Rookie mistake on my part.

This year, Jan and I finally saw an adult version of today’s bird that does indeed look like its name.

The day started out rather chilly in spite of being in what I would call the Nearly Deep South in February.  We had begun to traverse Laurel Hill Wildlife Drive at Savannah National Wildlife Refuge on the state line between South Carolina and Georgia.  Technically, we were standing in South Carolina by a couple hundred yards.  A winter wind was blowing that day, so we didn’t start out spending much time outside the car.  Near a small wind break Jan spotted something moving near the reeds at the edge the marsh. 

Little Blue Heron found by Brad and Jan Marks at Savannah National Wildlife Refuge, South Carolina

Hit the jump to see more of this “little boy blue”.

Continue reading Finally Blue…by Brad Marks

Great Baby Blue

We are working hard as we make the final push to the end of the year. You will be happy to know I have just started processing the spoils of our Texas trip back in January …of this year .. I know you were immediately wondering that based on my usual backlog ha. Not sure I will be able to get through the 700 gigs worth of those shots before he head back down there at the beginning of the year, but I will do my best. Then I can move on to the 600 gigs from Arizona in March/April followed by the latest Florida trip – once again I will be putting “An Intern” at the top of my wish list for Santa. Based on how successful that is, I might be able to remove “Take less pictures” from my 2026 goal list. Surely typical of all wildlife photographers out there..well, let’s generalize to just all photographers, taking the shot(s) is relatively quick in the process – reviewing, culling, processing, uploading to storage and then picking the few out of those worthy of your time…now that is the ten-fold time drag. My note on the HQ bulletin board looking for staff with free time still has all the tabs at the bottom. Word from our HR head says the employees think it is a ruse to get them to self-reveal the slackers. We would do no such thing hehehe.

So I soldier on. Feel sorry for me!?! Don’t, I kid, this is my thing and I truly enjoy our time in the field and ecstatic there are those, like yourselves, that like seeing the results. With that, time to get to the next installment of Baby Month!

Nesting Great Egrets found at High Island Rookery, Texas in April 2024

Hmmm, I might be a little premature on this entry. Hit the jump to see why this Great Egret is giving me a cautious look.

Continue reading Great Baby Blue

What’s the Play Here?

Hope all is well with everyone in the blogosphere! We are busy finishing up the Christmas decorations and making sure we are ready for my side of the family’s Christmas gathering this week. Although our parents are now looking down upon us (hopefully approvingly), I am very thankful for the chance to get together with my brothers and their wonderful families during the holidays – granted, seeing our 7 Great Nieces/Nephews reminds me I’m older than I act ha. We will have a similar celebration on Linda’s side closer to Christmas.

In between the hustle and bustle, I am doing my best to stay on top of the post production. We will likely be calling it a year as we get closer to Christmas to allow our virtual Intrigued family to spend time celebrating with their real families and to recharge the batteries for another exciting year of bringing you our adventures from the field. Until then, let’s keep the ball rolling on the “Baby Month” theme.

Limpkins found at Paynes Prairie Preserve State Park in Gainesville, Florida in April 2023

Hit the jump if you like your shot for bird fever with an extra dose of cuteness!

Continue reading What’s the Play Here?

Baby Kill’ers

Welcome to the third entry in the “Baby Month” theme! Hopefully the title didn’t scare anyone off as it can be construed differently if the specifically placed apostrophe is interpreted incorrectly. If you made it to this point, you are good to go, no fear, there are adorables on the way … in just a bit. First the traditional banter to bring you up on the world of Intrigued.

The ankle is progressing, a bit slower than I expected/wanted, but as long we are getting closer to being back on the ultra circuit, I’ll stick with the program. I was actually released from the brace during yesterday’s therapy session. It was mainly being used as additional stability during the more intense exercises, but all the work during the sessions and more importantly, the religious commitment to the home workouts (minimally 3 times a day), it is ready to go solo! Still trying to be smart about it, keeping mindful on uneven ground and watching like a hawk for any crazy old ladies at the grocery story so they don’t ram me with their carts – it’s a thing folks, so much that it was one of the first things the surgeon warned me about after surgery…and you thought the only grey hair danger was on the road ha. Told my therapist that all the work on their basketball court (side shifts, braid walking, ladder hopscotch and lateral ladder steps, etc.) are bringing back a flood of memories from my grade school basketball practices – thank god no suicides or flutter kicking yet ‘cuz that crap sucked hehehe.

No on to the topic that soothes the heart – wildlife babies!

Killdeer Chicks found at Sweetwater Wetlands Park in Gainesville, FL in April 2023

If you like those adorable fuzzy bird fledglings, hit the jump for an extra helping.

Continue reading Baby Kill’ers

I Like [Baby] Birds

First off, getting word back that our extended family member at our western HQ is out of ankle surgery and resting at home. Continued best wishes for a quick recovery from all of us here!

Meanwhile we are busy getting our Christmas tree(s) trimmed and the rest of the “Hallmarkification” completed ahead of our upcoming holiday gathering. One of our favorite events each December was heading out to the local tree farm, traipsing all over the grounds until we eventually made our way back to the first tree we looked at and then prepared for battle – first reminding the arms what it was like before the days of chainsaws and then testing our marriage as we struggled to get the 10+’ tree back to the entrance for bundling and payment. Eventually we shifted our hunt to a particular hardware store in town that featured our favored Fraser Fir. The tree lot owner came down from Michigan every year and would set aside what he thought was his best 11+’ footer for us. Didn’t have the traditional feel to it, but was easier on the marriage ha! Then a couple of years ago we decided the effort to take down the tree on Christmas day or the day after was more effort than we were willing to take on, needing to get that flame accelerator out of the house before heading south. Now we have a 12′ artificial. Do I miss the “Fun old-fashion family Christmas” trek into the country to embrace “the frosty majesty of winter landscape and select that most important of Christmas symbols”. I guess the answer is kinda – it felt like a grounding against the corporatization of the holiday…but looking down at the weather forecast and seeing that it will dip down to 3F tonight…maybe the twinkling plastic isn’t such a bad thing. If nothing else, it cuts down on the constant “Lotta sap in here!” jokes between us.

While I give the ankle a good workout on the ladder, thought I would bring you the next installment in our “Baby Month” series.

Sandhill Cranes with Colts found at Sweetwater Wetlands Park in Gainesville, FL in April 2023

Hit the jump to oooh and ahhhh over some more shots of adorable colts.

Continue reading I Like [Baby] Birds

It’s Baby Month!

After quite a trek, I am glad to say we have successfully made it back home from our Florida field trip. We ended up having to come home two days early due to the weather situation in the Midwest. Looking at the forecast, we noticed a big snow event that was planned for last Friday night thru Sunday morning and then another round coming in on the following Monday/Tuesday. Driving the RV through that is not enjoyable, especially when pulling another vehicle. As mentioned in the last post, we decided to try to get back between the white goal posts and opted to hard press it so we could get back by Sunday night. Big thanks to Linda who drove the entire way while I tried to navigate through the weather cells and hordes of holiday travelers. I would be feeling pretty great if I wasn’t staring down a new crown scheduled for tomorrow – damn I hate dental procedures ugh.

Anyway, we are home and we are officially in the last month of the year. In honor of the well-celebrated birthday towards the end of this month, we’ve declared it Baby Month where we are going to try and feature as many wildlife offspring we can find in our queues. To start us off we are going with a double feature.

Young Brown Thrasher found at Shell Mounds on Dauphin Island in April 2023

Hit the jump to enjoy more shots of wild “babies”.

Continue reading It’s Baby Month!