We just learned that we have taken a CINE Golden Eagle in the 2010 competition for our film Disturbance. This film also won three Telly Awards and College Emmy from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

You can see the film here:

What’s going on in the Northern Rockies right now? Everything! This is go time for most species, time to rear young, grow antlers, and put on fat. While summer heat hits the valley bottoms, ice still melts up high. Fresh glacier lilies unfold slowly in the alpine shadows. Below is selection from the week’s wanderings around the Northern Rockies.

A long-billed curlew surveys its territory below in which two vulnerable nestlings are beginning to walk.

The echoing rattle of Sandhill cranes penetrates the thick heat of the day.

Sun setting behind a few ponderosa pines. A lone magpie passes by overhead.

This week we journeyed yet again back to the cottonwood gallery along
a nearby creek to see what breeding birds we might find. Here are
two quintessential sights from a warm morning in the gallery.

This male Lazuli bunting glances up at one of its mates, a dull brown
female, higher in the canopy.

Below, a bee pollinates cow parsnip blossoms, a plant which bears
love to eat in the early spring.

We also watched a western wood-pewee snatching passing insects
out of the air in a behavior typical of flycatchers called “hawking”.

Until next time…

The prolonged rainy weather in the Northern Rockies has finally given way to a spectacular green up and wildflower season. On this hill the incessant wind creates conditions equivalent to that of alpine tundra. As a result, many alpine tundra plant species can be found here at a surprisingly low 3,000 ft.

This is also the time of year when the screeching of baby great horned owlets fills the riparian galleries. This pair was hatched in this glorious ponderosa snag.

Male calliope hummingbirds patrol their territories from atop high perches in all the woody draws that fill with serviceberry, willow, choke cherry, and hawthorn. These birds time their migratory arrival with the spring flow of sap rather than the blossoming of nectar-providing flowers. Sapsuckers hammer into these sap-rich trees and hummingbirds, such as this calliope get a jump on the breeding season by stealing from the sapsucker wells.

And lastly, male butterflies, such as this silvery blue, are frantically gathering minerals at evaporating puddles to give to prospective mates.

Until next week…

The founder of Conservation Media, Jeremy Roberts just won a College EMMY from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences last week for his graduate thesis film Disturbance. He completed this film for Conservation Media as part of his graduate thesis in Science & Natural History filmmaking at Montana State University.

View the film here:

We just received word that we won two more Telly Awards, bringing the total to four!
These were Silver Tellies, the highest honor, for Cinematography and Nature/Environment category.

Moving on to the next thing!

We caught a fleeting glimpse of these incredibly fast pronghorns out
in the Big Hole Valley. A late spring skif of snow blankets the foothills.
This valley will soon be green, and just as quickly turn brown.

A red-tailed hawk surveys the landscape for prey, with the Bitteroot
Mountains in the background. Snowpack in these mountains is below
50% of normal this year.

Below, a snowberry clearwing moth (Hemaris affinis), a day-flying moth
that mimics bumble bees to deter predation. Unlike bumble bees,
however, this moth can hover at flowers.
http://conservationmedia.com/?p=843

Here’s a quick look at what is going on in my neck of the woods,
the northern Rockies. Osprey are sitting on eggs and hunting
for fish just about everywhere you find a river or creek.

Elk are still mingling in the low country and valley bottoms.
We’ve been getting a lot of late, high-country snow, but
they’ll move up soon.

Until next week…

The foothills of the northern Rockies are littered with abandoned homesteads.
This is along one of my favorite moose haunts in the Pintlar Mountains where
I radio-collared wolverines back in the day. Note the dead and dying pine trees,
killed by beetles whose laraval stage is no longer limited by extremely low winter
temperatures.

We also spent some time with a breeding pair of American Dippers this week along
a snow-melt fed creek brown with tannins. Dippers are the only truly aquatic songbird,
and like most dippers, this pair made their nest out of moss affixed under an overhang
at the creek’s edge, perfectly inaccessible to predators. If there is one species vulnerable
to climate change, it’s certainly an aquatic songbird whose livelihood depends on snowpack
and low water temps to nurture the invertebrate prey this female searches for.

Unlike noctuid moths, these geometrid moths hold their wings flat against whatever
surface they’ve landed on, one based on their own wing color. Although not a perfect
match, this little emerald has chosen at least the right color range. North America is
blessed with 1,400 species, the larvae of which are lumped into the layman’s moniker
of “inch worm”. Some geometrid populations have changed color match environments
darkened by air pollution.

Last but not least, is a lovely little patch of shooting stars (Dodecatheon pulchellum), a
plant whose Latin binomial literally means “twelve beautiful gods”.

This week’s photos capture the extremes of early May in the Northern
Rockies which is characterized simply as a battle between winter and
summer.

This pine grosbeak (Pinicola enucleator) wards off the morning’s freezing
river fog by eating the remains of last years fruit.

This Sylvan hairstreak (Satyrium sylvinus), with its false eye and
antenna on its hind wings, somehow survives the cold nighttime
temperatures.