Big Horn - Ewes

I seem to be stuck on animals or big landscape type shots but tend to lead toward animals. I keep a camera in my living room so when birds are at the feeders I have, I can snap off a few shots. I haven't posted many of my backyard moochers which are mostly finches, sparrows year round and chickadees (usually in the winter/early spring) then they are gone. Other birds come in also, and occasionally a hawk to try and feed on the birds.

Well, back to larger animals! Still a shot from this past March when my daughter and I were visiting grandma/pa in Cody, Wyoming. We traveled up towards the East gate of Yellowstone Park and just off the road in the hillsides were small groups of Bighorn Sheep.

I caught a small group of Ewes about 150-200 yards away from the road and hung out in the sagebrush and scrub and took a few shots. This one was kind of interesting and didn't even notice the one animal behind the one I was concentrating on. Could probably play with it in Photoshop and make it look like a sheep with two sets of horns!

Well, just posting you know. It is a quiet Memorial Day Monday and thanks to the Veterans (including me) we get to be away from our places of work. More days like this would be welcome I think.

Tim -

Wyoming Wind

Back in the mid 90's I lived in Casper for almost two years. It was pretty good times and really had nothing going on but work and close to the mountains. But when the wind blew there it was just amazing how fierce it could be! When it snowed in the winter we would often have a few days of calm while the snow piled up then afterward would just blow and move the snow away. It always amazed me!

Well, with that thought in mind and wind energy sprouting up all over the place I come back to Wyoming. Yes the wind still blows there and probably as fierce as ever. But this past summer of 2009 as I traveled back on I-80 to a backpacking trip I ran across some turbine fields out in the middle of the High Basin plains of Wyoming. It was odd as they were not there just over six years ago on my travels out to Oregon, but progress shall not be stopped. Not even in Coal country!

I took this shot, not a great one, but one of several as I sat along side the interstate seeing these huge turbines sitting on this ridge line in the middle of this dry plains. Not really even close to any of the communities along this vehicle pipeline. It makes me hope that they do the best research to make sure environmental impacts are minimized as much as possible to those animals that roam the ground and fly the skies in this area. Yes it is cleaner power, but hope we do not sacrifice many wonderful things just so I can run my PC.

Well, enjoy the shot and please visit my website at www.timehlers.com, for other photos of wildlife, landscapes, and much more.

Tim

My Hawks Will Not sit Still!

Wow, the start of May already and where is this year going? Looks like some rain moving in to start our first week of May. At least it stays away most of the weekend hours!

Well has many may know I have a few bird feeders in the back yard and enjoy seeing the many Finches, Chickadees, a few Towhees?, sparrows, etc come around for their free lunches, dinners and so on. Of course this provides for some other birds of different feather to come around and I get the occasional visit from both Sharp Shinned Hawks and Cooper's Hawks.

This shot was taken back in December of 2009 in the mid morning and the Cooper's Hawk would not turn around for me to get a shot of it, bashful I guess? Anyway, it was just taking off from the fence after not collecting any of the smaller birds for its brunch!

Another thing is I took this shot with my Pentax istDS camera which is now in the hands of a friend of mine who purchased it for a reasonable price. I have purchased a new Pentax K-X to use as my back up camera to my Pentax K20D. I am studying the manual on the new camera so I can use some of the different features such as HD movie capture. Since all my cameras take SD or SDHC I can also play them on our large TV in the living room in its SD slot. Pretty cool to see some of the shots on the 'Big Screen'!

Until later, have a great day, week or month! Tim

Still in Wyoming -

Still out in the West of Wyoming but actually East from my home base in Oregon. A second day we went out to find animals to photograph and not much luck out the South Fork Road from Cody.

There often is plenty out there but was not our day and we were giving up hope. Then some Pronghorn came into view and got Grandma to pull the van over to a safe place. I was along a fence line about 200 yards plus from the animals. Viewing from about 100 plus feet higher then they were and the wind was blowing about 20 mph. I held the camera to the top of an old fence post to steady the shot and it worked okay.

I have cropped in some on this so the animals are really not very crisp but they were not spooked with me being so far away, and not even sure they knew we were there! I will continue to seek those Pronghorn out and get some good shots.

Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by!

Tim

Visit to Wyoming

Well back in March, not so long ago my daughter and I headed back East to Wyoming to visit my folks or her grandparents depending on who's interpretation. It was over our local school districts spring break and back there the temps were starting rise and the snow inching its way back up the mountain sides.

This can bring us some good photo opportunities near Yellowstone Park as some animals are still down lower to the rivers and creeks during the daytime and head back in the hills during the evening and night. We had hopes of catching some Elk, Bison and possibly Grizzly Bear as it had been reported some had broken their hibernation.

We didn't have luck on those but did run into some small groupings of Big Horn Sheep near the N. Shoshone river (I think that is the name of it). Also have numerous shots of Mule Deer and some Pronghorn and will add those to the regular website when I make the time.

Here I have two shots, one being out the airplane window as we fly over the cascades out SeaTac Airport and the other is a pretty solid Ram. They have lighter coats as the winter wears on into spring then will start getting their darker brown coats later in Summer to fall.

Thanks for checking things out! Tim