by Judy Lehmberg, BioPics Photography, www.vernelehmberg.com
Summer has finally made it to Yellowstone. It has been a cool, wet spring, which is great for the plants, animals, and photographers, but it has really warmed up in the last couple of days. It is getting hard to find much animal activity in the middle of the day but the mornings and evenings are still good.
I have been hearing rumors of a fox hanging around Mammoth for a couple of weeks. Yesterday when we drove into Mammoth we finally saw it running across the road to the justice center. It really had to dodge the cars. I guess people don’t expect to have a fox dart out in front of them. We thought the cars had really scared the fox but when it got to the grass around the justice center it immediately started hunting ground squirrels. We got our cameras out and while we were doing that the fox vaporized. We walked around for a while and couldn’t find it anywhere. We got back in the truck and decided to look around the cabins. As we drove slowly we found it resting in the shade of one of the cabins. We didn’t want to bother it so we parked and quietly got our cameras out. That fox couldn’t of cared less! At first it was just sitting there enjoying the cool shade but then it put its head down and went to sleep. We slipped away and it never looked up.
Later in the day we drove the Blacktail Plateau dirt road and found two black bears, a cinnamon and a black, and several lazuli buntings. They are the western “cousins” of indigo buntings, with which they hybridize where their ranges overlap. Indigo buntings are eastern birds we have at our bird feeders during spring migration. Lazuli buntings are a real treat. They aren’t an uncommon bird but I haven’t seen very many of them.
On our way out of the park we found the big horn ewes and lambs again and I was lucky to get one baby nursing. The moms don’t let them nurse for long so they have to drink fast. As you can see this baby wasn’t at a very comfortable angle. Just after I took this photo it went down on its knees but then Mom said dinner was over and walked away.
Only nature can get away with combining these colors (in birds). Lovely photos.
Perfect day. I still can’t find that darned fox. The image of the bunting is just spectacular.
Reading the story of the fox it reminds me of what happens when I get my fly swatter out, the fly seems to disappear 🙂 The color is so saturated in your photos, remarkable beauty.