Monthly Archives: March 2007

Huckleberry Breakfast

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A black bear cub eats huckleberries amidst the fall colors at Grand Teton National Park

It’s early in the morning and I’m trying to wind down so I can get some sleep, I’m hoping to get up early and do a little wildlife watching.

I know better than to look through my Teton pictures at this hour.

Really I do.

They always get me a little revved up, making me want to drop everything and load up the car and head out for the West.

This picture isn’t from last fall but the fall before that, somehow it never made it up onto my web site. Usually this happens because, as with this picture, I took a whole slew of pictures that I liked, and I wait until I edit them all to determine which ones I want to put up. But then I forget to go back and choose my favorites and so …

This little black bear cub was dining on a breakfast of huckleberries along with his sibling and mother — in this picture he’s actually pulling a cluster of berries from the branch with his mouth. The bear trio was well known and tolerant of people so a small army of onlookers gathered every sunrise to watch them.

I returned to the area last fall but the bears were nowhere to be seen, but I’ll never forget the chance to watch them as the sun rose and they were enveloped in the reds and yellows of the fall colors, fattening themselves for the long winter to come.

Trees Standing at the Edge of Memory

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How’s that for a pretentious title?

Just because you arrive at Ridgefield with the dawn, it doesn’t mean the sun arrives with you. It can get pretty foggy there in the sloughs and fields next to the Columbia River. This can really limit your options as a photographer, but creates some new opportunities as well.

I liked the way these trees appeared to be floating on an island of clouds, and all pretentiousness aside, it did remind me more of the memory of trees than of the trees themselves. I should take a picture of these trees sometime in the daylight, it’s a remarkably uninteresting scene without the mystery of the fog.

Get a Haircut, Hippy!

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The bittern below didn’t stop with one snake, but soon after caught a second (and larger) red-spotted garter snake. It was several minutes between the time the bittern caught the snake before the snake was dead. For a while, the bittern sat with the snake under water but clenched firmly in its talons, then proceeded to kill it with the same method as the first snake: crush it until it dies, always keeping the snake’s head away from any soft tissue.

Unfortunately the bittern was pretty well covered up in the reeds most of the time it had the snake so I couldn’t take any pictures. Towards the end the snake wrapped itself tightly around the bill of the bittern, if the bittern had been a foot to the left I could have gotten a really nice picture. The bittern even turned its back to me when it finally swallowed the snake, so this was one of those experiences that you see more than you photograph.

I was in my car on both occasions, watching the bittern from the auto tour at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge. I waited to start my car until after the bittern had finished its breakfast, I was afraid of spooking it and causing it to leave it’s hard won meal. After it was finished, it sometimes adopted it’s head-in-the-air, trying to be invisible pose — which is remarkably effective — but most of the time it was more relaxed. I happened to find this one because I have seen bitterns in the area before and was specifically looking for them.

The bittern really made itself scarce when a large flock of geese in a nearby field suddenly took flight. I looked to the skies for the usual cause of such an occurrence: a bald eagle harassing the flock. Sure enough, an adult had buzzed the field and was casually flying away.

Today’s title refers to the long blonde feathers on the bird’s head, which are much longer than I’ve noticed on bitterns in the past. None of my guide books make any mention of this, nor a quick internet search, but I suspect this may be a breeding plumage (the picture was taken in early March 2007).

The snakes are probably easier to catch than normal, as they are just coming out of hibernation and looking to mate. I saw seven more garter snakes that day (5 red-spotted and 2 common), but these weren’t being swallowed, they were warming themselves and looking for mates alongside a trail.

Red-spotted Breakfast

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An American bittern eats a red-spotted garter snake at Ridgefield National Wildlife Refuge

Red-spotted snakes are almost too beautiful for words. They are not too beautiful for breakfast, apparently, at least not if you’re a hungry bittern. I came across this bittern after it had captured a red-spotted garter snake early one morning. It killed the snake by applying pressure with its beak, often to the snake’s head. The snake was already bleeding a little bit and not putting up much of a fight.

While it adjusted the snake’s position in its beak from time to time, it never let the head get too far from its beak, so that the snake couldn’t swing up and bite any soft tissue. It took a while for the snake to die, this shot is from right at the end of the snake’s life, it went limp after this final crushing of its head. The bittern made sure the snake was dead before swallowing it by thrashing it around.

Probably a good idea when your breakfast can bite you back.

An Unexpected Favorite

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In a year in which I visited the Tetons and Yellowstone, I never expected one of my favorite wildlife pictures to be taken in my own backyard.

We’ve got at least a couple of different types of leafhoppers in our yard, with my favorite being these little green ones. I had spotted this one on a rose bush and decided to play around with some handheld macro pictures. Most macro pictures focus on high magnification, but since I was shooting handheld I shot more of an environmental macro.

I used a shallow depth of field, which usually works against you in a macro picture but I love the way it turned the leaves and stems into an abstract of colors and shapes.