冰川国家公园100天第41－60天

Day 60, To Linnaeus

01/July/2009

Twinflower's Latin name is Linnae borealis and is named after Carl Linnaeus, the Swedish scientist known as the father of taxonomy. Taxonomy is scientific naming of animals and plants. Twinflower grows in mats on the forest floor, with thousands of small flowers no larger than your pinky nail. To really enjoy it, you need to get on your belly, or at least, your knees.

Day 59, Good morning

29/June/2009

The push is on to photograph at least 100 different species of birds (particularly since I've seen little else, save for some very scruffy bighorn sheep). I'm not really a morning person, but yellow warblers make it worthwhile.

Day 58, Meet the vireos

29/June/2009

Warbling vireos make an elegant pouch nest. The male and female tend to the young, both will take turns sitting on the nest. Here, the male (presumably, since they're nearly impossible to tell apart) gives the female a little love bite.

Day 57, An evening flight

27/June/2009

The small meadows of Glacier are my favorite places. They range from 2 to 100 acres in size and if you wait long enough, something interesting almost always happens. Tonight, the great gray owl returned, hunting in the evening light.

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Day 56, Logan Pass opens

26/June/2009

So Logan Pass opened for vehicle traffic yesterday and I got up there a little late (about 6 p.m.) and stayed until dark. I expected the place to be a zoo, but there were few people up there and fewer still as the light faded. In fact, I had the entire Hidden Lake overlook to myself, which is a little weird, because there's almost always someone there. I took several nice panoramic shots, but the one I keep coming back to is this VW bug in the parking lot. It was the last car in the lot, save for my truck. Logan Pass can be a surreal place.

Day 55, Butterfly evening

25/June/2009

I was photographing a species of butterfly called an Admiral, when these two mating checkered skippers plopped down in front of me. Mating butterflies don't fly very well. I can't imagine mating and flying at the same time, but it sounds like fun.

Day 54, Ghost in the Meadow

24/June/2009

Nearly all of the photos in this journey have been cropped to some degree. This one I decided to leave alone. The great gray owl is a magnificent bird, almost three feet tall. I haven't seen one in years. I noticed this lump on the stick and said, "Hey, that looks like a great gray." Looked through the lens. Sure enough, it was.

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Day 53, New hiking apparel

23/June/2009

Sometimes you get out inthe woods and run into a guy in a suit roaring. It happens. OK, OK, it's a dancer working on a Wolf Trap production for the Park's Centennial. He's yawning. Still not sure why he's in a tux, though. I hope it's a rental. It's not only dirty out in the burns, it was raining.

Day 52, Asleep at the wheel? Hardly

21/June/2009

A northern hawk owl blinks its eyes. In that instant, it looks as if it's asleep. But it's very much awake. Hawk owls hunt during the day, eating everything from voles to starlings to juncos. (They eat the juncos whole.) This is the third hawk owl I've seen since I started this project (the first was on day one) and I was able to spend about an hour photographing it. Hawk owls are fairly rare in Glacier.

Day 51, I never promised you a rose garden, oh wait, yes I did...

21/June/2009

Wild roses abound in Glacier. The hips make table fare for deer and bears in the fall.

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Day 50, Rainbow in the trees

20/June/2009

Virtually every day I'll hear a western tanager. But they're almost always high in the canopy. The neotropical delights winter in Central America and migrate to Montana to raise their young. An absolutely fantastic bird and a great way to get to the halfway point. I haven't had a chance to count the number of bird species I've been able to successfully photograph. But I do know this: I don't have a black capped chickadee. You've got to be kidding me.

Day 49, An evening surprise

20/June/2009

Black bears aren't always black. Ran into this sow with two cubs (one shown). They weren't aggressive, but I yelled and threw a rock in their direction to get them off the trail and away from me, just in case.

Day 48, Evening clouds

18/June/2009

This was the last day for me to bike the Sun Road without cars around, so I headed out into a downpour, got soaked, and then the skies cleared and I made this picture. Mount Oberlin is to the right. The Garden Wall and Haystack Butte peek through the clouds.

Day 47, The big song

17/June/2009

The ruby crowned kinglet is one of the smallest birds in North America, smaller than some species of hummingbirds. But its song is huge, a multi-noted melody that it belts from the trees and bushes in Glacier National Park. You can find these birds everywhere from forests to brushy marshes. Photographing them is a challenge. The idea is to get the bird in song and at least show its ruby crown, which it normally keeps flat. Here, the crown is raised at least a little.

Day 46, The Sun Road

16/June/2009

This week I've decided to bike the Sun Road for a few days, since it's expected to completely open to car traffic soon. Once that happens, Glacier becomes a bit of a zoo. Folks are pleasant enough, but I must admit, I enjoy my solitude. Here, Heaven's Peak is bathed in the evening light. It's a rare day when you can stand on the road and view this sight all alone.

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Day 45, Moonrise

15/June/2009

The moon rises over the Livingston Range in a blaze of light in this timed exposure of about an hour. Stumbling around setting up a camera at 1 a.m. is always, well, interesting...

Day 44, Stomp your feet

15/June/2009

This young buck stomped and snorted and stomped and snorted when it found me. I was sitting on a big log across the creek and he was on a small island in the creek in the backcountry. Deer stomp and snort when they encounter something they're not sure of. Then they usually take off. The snort, if you've never heard it before, is quite unique.

Day 43, Bear grass, a different view

13/June/2009

Today was an especially productive day, from a tree frog to a coyote (I've seen at least 9 coyotes on this journey), to several different species of flowers to cedar waxwings eating blossoms from Glacier's lone apple tree (well, it's the only one I know of, apples aren't native and they draw bears, so the Park has a tendency to cut them down, especially in developed areas). I've been revisiting some favorite places and one of those is blooming with bear grass. I suspect it will be a good year for this favorite plant across the Park. So here it is, bear grass, up close and personal.

Day 42, 3 wolves, here's one of them

12/June/2009

A gray wolf makes its way across a meadow. Wolves inhabit all of Glacier. You see their tracks and kills, but rarely the animal itself. This was one of three that was at least 100 yards away. I don't think it ever noticed me. One of the the three had an injured back leg.

Day 41, The other hummingbird

10/June/2009

The other species of hummingbird (and more commonly seen) in Glacier is the rufous hummingbird. Here, a female feeds in a flowering bush (I'm working on a ID of said bush, it's not in my flower book). It was just dumb ass luck I got this shot. I was checking on another bird nest (a warbling vireo) when the hummer flew up. Sometimes life works that way. They call them pleasant surprises.

My grandmother never tired of this joke, which, telling it, was a joke in itself.

Why do hummingbirds hum?
Because they don't know the words.