After posting that I finally had gotten a picture of a deer at Ridgefield that I liked, the very next morning I arrived early in a heavy rain and found a doe and buck just past the entrance gate and before getting onto the refuge proper. I parked my car in a little pullout, rolled down the window, and draped a towel over the door to protect the insides from the rain. I watched the two of them for quite some time, I had the refuge to myself as apparently others don’t like the rain as much as I do.

I got this close look at the damp doe as she grazed in a small meadow at the top of the refuge. There used to be a lot of other meadows in the area even just a couple of years ago but they’ve been plowed under as Ridgefield has exploded into a bedroom community for Portland and Vancouver.

A black-tailed doe in the soft early light

May is a wonderful time to be at Ridgefield, but it can be frustrating too, as the gates don’t open until well after sunrise and close before sunset. On a sunny day, that means the best light of the day is gone before you can even get onto the refuge and find an interesting subject.

But on a cloudy day, which we’ve had a lot of lately, you can still get some beautiful soft light even an hour after sunrise, and useable light for much of the day. I came across this black-tailed doe early one morning as she dined on plants in the River S Unit. It’s not exactly rare to see deer at the refuge, but not all that common either, and this is the first time I’ve been happy with one I’ve photographed there.

Too bad she didn’t have any young fawns with her! Or maybe she did, I would have never seen them in the tall grass.

Everywhere I go, animals are overjoyed to see me. I can’t believe it’s been a year since I was in the redwoods, can’t wait to get down there again.

Deer lack upper canine teeth but compensate by pinching vegetation against a calloused part of their mouth. This doe was eating the leaves of the blackberry bush by pressing the leaves to the roof of her mouth with her tongue and then pulling them off. She and her little ones were ignoring the other plants of the meadow and exclusively feeding on the blackberry leaves.

When packing for my trip to the redwoods, I went back and forth on whether I should bring my big telephoto lens. It’s so large and heavy that I wasn’t planning on hiking with it and didn’t expect to have much use for it among the big trees in any event. But with the hope of seeing harbor seals on the coast, I packed it alongside the rest of my camera gear.

A fortuitous decision but not because of harbor seals — I did see seals but not in good light. No, it was the meadows in the southern half of Redwood National Park that caught my fancy with the big glass, several families of black-tailed deer grazed one meadow and a herd of elk another.

Near sunset on my first full day in the park, a family of blacktails browsed on the blackberry vines that grew sporadically amongst the tall grasses of the meadow. I pointed the big lens at one fawn and was particularly delighted to see who was staring back at me: Sam the Snowman, the narrator from the Rudolph the red-nosed reindeer Christmas special I watched many times as a child.

A black-tailed fawn nibbles at the tops of huckleberry bushes. I like shots like this where the animal is partially hidden in its environment and was fortunate that not only is its eye visible but you can even see a bit of the white of its eye as it stretches to eat.

Watching this fawn and its sibling and mother started off one of my favorite hiking days where I spent the entire day on the Skyline Trail with stunning views of Rainier and the Cascades and deer and bears and marmots and pikas and ground squirrels and grouse and friendly people and my oh my but that was a fun trip.

This doe is the mother of the two fawns in the previous picture, they were browsing the tops of the huckleberry bushes, nibbling off the uppermost leaves and branches. As far as I could tell, they didn’t seem too interested in the berries themselves, leaving those for the bears.

“Don’t look now but Boolie’s taking our picture. I said don’t look!”

This doe was with her fawn on the Hurricane Hill Trail at Hurricane Ridge in Olympic National Park. The deer there are very tolerant of people and will often pass close by on the trail as it runs along the top of the ridge. I decided to take a couple of head shots of this doe, one with her shadowed by a hill and with a backdrop of trees, and the other where she stepped a little to the right and into the sunlight. These pictures were taken a minute apart, and even though she only moved a few feet, the difference in light gives each picture its own mood. I like her pose better in the shaded picture, and also that the green background really brings out her whiskers.

I nearly had a beautiful headshot of a fawn a few minutes later right as the sun was setting, I had seen a doe and her two fawns walking near the trail and waited to see if they would cross the trail. They did, and one of the fawns looked directly at me in the beautiful light, but it ended up being closer to me than expected and I had the wrong lens mounted on the camera. By the time I switched lenses the moment was gone.

What follows is the welcome I got the moment I stepped on the trails in Mount Rainier National Park.

(Gasping in surprise) Oh my … Is that who I think it is? It cannot be but it is! It cannot be but it is! Hey everybody, Boolie’s here! Boolie’s here! Boolie’s here!

Are there any little rabbits in here? Because Boolie’s here! Boolie’s here! Boolie’s … what? Well how was I supposed to know you were asleep? I’m not even one year old!

(Speaking very softly) Are there any ground squirrels in here? Because if you’re not asleep, and you’re not very grumpy, Boolie’s here!

Nom nom nom … huckleberries huckleberries huckleberries … What was that? Did somebody say something? Nom nom nom …

It can’t be Boolie, he always goes to Yellowstone this time of year, let me go up and take a look. Well shut my mouth! It is Boolie! It is! It is! It is! If only we had a way get the word out to all the animals!

BOOLIE’S HERE!

(An elk bull halfway across the state in the Hoh Rainforest raises his head) What? What was that? Boolie’s there? Is he coming here? Can it be? OK OK, calm down. Deep breaths. All right listen up everyone, this is our chance to show him you don’t have to go to Yellowstone to photograph elk! On your best behavior!

(Here’s a description of the animals in each picture, maybe they all weren’t taken the moment I stepped on the trails).

1. The look of surprise on this American pika is actually it chewing with its mouth open. It was a part of a colony in a talus field near the start of the Palisades Lakes Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park. I’ll be posting more pictures of this pika, it provided one of my favorite moments of the trip.
2. A black-tailed fawn nibbles on plants along the Skyline Trail in the Paradise area of Mount Rainier National Park. It was one of two fawns following its mother beside the trail.
3. A black-tailed fawn nibbles on huckleberry bushes along the Skyline Trail in the Paradise area of Mount Rainier National Park. The sections of the trail near the Paradise Inn are a great spot to look for does, fawns, and bucks.
4. A black bear eating huckleberries near the Skyline Trail in the Paradise area of Mount Rainier National Park. This bear was the most beautiful black bear I’ve ever seen, it had brown fur with blonde hair sticking up on its back. Bears were the biggest surprise of the trip, I ended up seeing at least seven with two being close to the trail, I actually saw more bears and got better pictures than I did in Yellowstone and the Tetons last year, where I only saw a few and got no good pictures.
5. A golden-mantled ground squirrel (possibly the Cascade species, I’m not sure yet) in front of a snowfield at Panorama Point on the Skyline Trail in the Paradise area of Mount Rainier National Park. More pictures of these charming little guys to come.
6. A hoary marmot calls out an alarm call at the end of the Summerland Trail in the Sunrise area of Mount Rainier National Park. I had never seen hoary marmots before this trip and was delighted to see them so often and up close, lots more pictures to come. This one was calling out a short alarm but it was pretty mild compared to the alarms that went out when a bear walked past a marmot colony, the marmots went berserk.
7. An elk bull sniffs the air in the Hoh Rainforest in Olympic National Park. I enjoyed seeing elk in the lush rainforest and got a few nice pictures that contrast nicely with the elk in a sea of brown that I tend to get in Yellowstone.