Most Recent

Thirteen-lined Ground Squirrel

The other day, I was out kicking around a natural area just enjoying nature with no particular agenda. I imagine a lot of my readers think that I am constantly on the hunt to capture the next wildlife image. While it’s true that I spend a lot of time “attempting” to capture...

Cowbirds

Nature has so many different ways to accomplish just one task--reproduction.  At this time of year, it seems that everywhere I look I see are baby birds. It’s a blizzard of baby birds being fed by their parents. From a small backyard pond to the large expansive lakes and wetlands to...

Nesting Turtles

I often find the most interesting things in nature are the most mundane aspects of nature. For example, I am sure many of you are seeing turtles crossing roads or perhaps crawling across your yard. Why do these reptilian friends do this at this time of year and not at other times? Where are they...

Bank Swallow

In any profession there is often a lot of jargon and acronyms thrown around to express a point or to not use long cumbersome names. In the bird world, there are a ton of these, such as GHO standing for Great Horned Owl. In fact, there is an official abbreviation for all 10,000 plus species of...

Ruffed Grouse

I am no stranger to getting up at zero dark thirty. But when my alarm goes off at 4 am after not sleeping most of the night, it’s getting harder and harder to drag myself out of bed. I was reminded of this recently when my alarm went off, at 4 am, and I needed to get up to photograph a...

Great Horned Owl

There are a lot of aspects of nature that I find interesting. However, what I find even more interesting are what people think of nature. Or more specifically the “rules” people place on nature. And then everyone is surprised when nature doesn’t follow these human imposed...

American Woodcock

Stepping out of my truck and into the cool fresh air of a late evening. It feels so good to be outside in nature, especially after being trapped inside my house for these many weeks. To the west, the sun is setting, and I figured I had about 10 minutes before all the fun begins.

I love...

Chorus Frog

I enjoy cracking my bedroom window at night to let some fresh air in and to cool down the room for sleeping. This means I hear a lot of things going on outside my home. In summer I can hear Barred Owls calling. A couple weeks ago I could hear Tundra Swans migrating (at night) on their way to...

Osprey

I find it interesting how we often think of nature as one specific way and only one way. No variations or exceptions. It is either this way or that way. Nothing in between. I have been traveling, studying and writing books about nature for over 30 years and the one thing that I have learned over...

Black Vulture

It seems that a lot of people are only interested in the glamorous or top-tier species of mammals and birds. For example, no one seems to be interested in mice, voles or shrews. You don’t see television documentary shows on these tiny critters. But it’s a different story when it...