NaturalVisions Blog

Grizzly Bear – Tongass National Forest, Alaska (click image to view larger) This is an image I made returning from spending a little time at the Fish Creek Bear Viewing Area in Hyder, Alaska back in August of 2006. This Grizzly Bear (Ursus arctos horribilis) was just off the side of the road peeking out of the brush – while I was in the (relative) safety of my truck when I took the photo. Don’t think I would have wanted to be walking through the area at the time, either. This was a big bear, probably on its way to the creek for some salmon . . .

Colorful Rocks (click image to view larger)

In the southern region of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument – east of Kanab just off U.S. Highway 89 – is a area featuring colorful rocks near the Pareah Townsite. Triassic in age, the banded rocks are of the Petrified Forest Member of the Chinle Formation, quite a ways north of the same member of the Chinle found in – you guessed it – Petrified Forest National Park. Unlike the national park, you will not find any petrified trees here . . .

To see last week’s quiz bird, Least Grebe (Tachybaptus dominicus), in the U.S. you will have to make your way south to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas. For this week, since there are a lot of challenging juvenile birds around, I have one just for you. Good luck and great birding!

Black-chinned Hummingbird (6 images in album) (click image to view album)

Last week’s Wings post featured hummingbirds and last week, on the same days I was photographing the Utah Prairie Dogs featured in Monday’s mammals post, I also spent some time sitting by my hummingbird feeders. I figure you can never see too many hummingbirds, so here are some shots from Wednesday and Friday last week. The last two images are”100% crops” out of two of those images and are not the extreme closeups they appear to be – I just took 1000 pixels out of the original image and posted it for fun(the originals are a little over 3500 pixels wide).

Roxy (click image to view larger)

Utah Prairie Dogs at Bryce Canyon (6 images in album) (click image to view album)

I spent a little time on my days off last week photographing hummingbirds and Utah Prairie Dogs (Cynomys parvidens) not far from home. The hummingbirds, actually, were only a few feet outside my front door, the prairie dogs about 1/2 mile away. Included in this album are 6 images from the prairie dogs, 3 from Wednesday and 3 from Friday. As the end of Summer approaches and destined to head underground by about the end of October for a few months, the “UPDs” as we affectionately call them here, are quite busy eating as much as they can.

A River & Some Rock Art (click image to view album)

On an adventure earlier in the week I had the chance to visit some interesting places and snap a few photos. The first image is from Horseshoe Bend in Arizona just south of page. A few miles south of Glen Canyon Dam the Colorado makes a big sweeping turn as it makes its way toward the Grand Canyon. Still farther downriver is Navajo Bridge where the second image in the album was taken. That photo was taken from the old bridge, built in 1927, that is now closed to vehicles. It’s a long way down – over 400 feet! Amazing how muddy the water got in on only about 12 miles!

The other two images in the album are from Catstair Canyon in the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. These are just two of several petroglyphs chiseled in to a sheer wall of sandstone (unfortunately some have also decided to make their mark in these centuries old examples of rock art). The first in the album is a human-like figure (or anthropomorph – though sometimes I look at it and think it might be a bird???), the second is an animal of some kind (a zoomorph) – maybe a sheep or deer. There are also a couple of pictographs on the wall as well at this site about 45 miles or so east of Kanab, UT.

Last week’s quiz bird was a challenge. Hairy and Downy Woodpeckers can be difficult to tell apart in the field as they are so similar. While the Hairy is larger – about the length of a robin – if they aren’t close, size can be deceiving. The best method is bill length, but even that can be somewhat tricky because bill lengths do vary. As a rule of thumb, Downy Woodpecker bills are shorter than the head and the Hairy’s is longer. The Hairy Woodpecker’s (Picoides villosus) bill is usually just about equal to the head’s size, plus I had the advantage of seeing it up close and know this bird was quite a bit larger than any Downy I’ve ever seen.

On the water for this week’s quiz – good luck and great birding!

Hummingbirds (click image to view album)

Among the most challenging to photograph, for this week’s post I’ve chosen 5 species of hummingbirds. The images are from Texas, Florida, Arizona, and here at Bryce Canyon.

Last week’s quiz bird was a species found in the arid southwest, Curve-billed Thrasher (Toxostoma curvirostre). For this week, a a widespread species that can be a real challenge in the field – good luck and great birding!