Weekly Photo Posts

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

The end of April brings frigid mornings which usually give way to enough warmth to melt the drifted snow. The first sage thrashers perch atop the tallest sage and fill the dawn with endless melodies. From the obscurity of the low sage comes a mysterious thumping and popping, and we [...]

The battle between winter and summer is favoring summer right now. The snowmelt from the Bitterroot Mountains is roaring down each and every canyon, and icicles are beginning to give way to warm sunlight. While old, haggard, overwintering butterflies have been aloft for weeks, the first new butterflies of the [...]