A full-time winter resident in Glacier is the American Dipper, a bird that actually flies on top of and under the water. Spent an entire afternoon photographing them the other day. Finally got some nice light.

By the light of a half moon, a starry night at Lake McDonald, Glacier National Park. When I was taking this photo, a great horned owl cruised across the creek and landed in the tree next to me with a thump. I could see very little, actually. Couldn't see through the camera viewfinder at all, in fact. But with a 30 second exposure, Glacier slowly came into existence.

Last weekend dished up postcard images like this buck, above. This weekend I helped with the annual Christmas Bird Count in Glacier and it pretty much rained all day long. Slogging through wet snow for 12 miles is no fun. I saw a small flock of pine grosbeaks, which made the day. The weatherman said it was supposed to snow (4-7 inches) but in never materialized. Still, I made OK time skiing for an old man. Did the 12 miles in just under 8 hours, not bad considering I broke trail for about 10 of those miles.

As a side note, the 100 days project definitely went viral. So far this month it's had more than 5 million page views.

We're having a good old fashioned blizzard here, with high winds and temps in the single digits. The whitetails, however, are still in the rut, so the bucks are chasing around the does, heavy snows or not. Here, a nice buck peers out of a cedar forest.

Many thanks to Alan taylor of the Boston Globe, who showcased the 100 day project in his "Big Picture" blog last week. The link is here: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/12/100_days_in_glacier_national_p.html

Folks seem to have liked the project.

Here is a sunset in a Glacier Park prairie last week. The weather is expected to plummet tonight into the 20 below to 30 below range by Monday and Tuesday. Still, the cold makes for some great photos, if the sun shines...

A red squirrel eats frozen fruit off a hawthorn tree in Glacier National Park yesterday. We've had these squalls which bring brief periods of heavy snowfall, but not much accumulation.

Doe in a flurry, Nikon D3, ISO 1,000.

My regular digital camera is a Nikon D300. But it's in the shop for a repair, so Nikon sent me a D3 as a replacement. The D3 is a full-frame camera, as opposed to the 300, which has a 1.5 x crop factor. (In other words, a 400 mm becomes a 600mm.)
The D3 is also faster (shoots 9 frames per second) and can shoot at much lower light levels.
With the D300, you can shoot at ISO 800 and still get a very good photo.
With the D3, you can easily shoot at ISO 2500. At 3200, while the photos lose color saturation, but they have just a little grain. Problem is, the D3 is very heavy and I'm so used to my telephotos being 50 percent longer, that I'm not inclined to buy one. (Nikon has actually discontinued the D3, upgrading it to the D3s which reportedly has even better high ISO files and shoots 720p video.)
The D3s is a beast of a camera, too, so I probably won't buy one (it also costs $5,100).
So now what? Mebbe I'll wait for a better D300 with better high ISO files. Or mebbe I'll buy the Leica M9, the lightest weight full-frame digital camera being made today. That only costs $7,000. Ouch babe.

The sun shone briefly yesterday. Long enough to show a frozen Howe Lake. I was surprised the Inside Road was still open. It was snowy and icy. Snow has fallen on the valley floor. Winter is settling in. Secondary roads on Glacier's east side are closed.

I never give up on a day. It was almost "dark dark" last night. The kind of dark where you can't see your feet when I heard a great horned owl in a tree. I had gone for a hike and saw virtually nothing (the weather was awful, windy, with wet styrofoam snow). I was close to the truck, so I got my flash out of the bag and got close enough for some pictures. This one is a long exposure and then the flash popped off, which creates the blur, and yet the eye is stationary. An interesting abstract.

I was walking along the edge of a North Fork meadow the other evening. The light was failing and the odds of getting a good picture were slim. Then I saw a wolf. It trotted off and I took a few frames, but it was a long way away, at least 150 yards. I kept walking and the wolf circled around a patch of trees and laid down about 100 yards away. By then the light was even worse. The wolf heard me and sat up. I took a few frames and figured I had squat. I had to underexpose a good stop and a half, but when I got home and checked the images, I noticed I had a sharp shot of the wolf's one eye. The photo is a bit grainy and the crop is very tight (this picture is barely six inches wide). But it works.

Did an afternoon hike to a North Fork lake and ran across this river otter. He (or she) definitely saw me, but still decided to a take a nap next to this beaver lodge. It's better to be lucky sometimes than good. Taken with a 400mm with a 1.4 teleconverter. With a 1.5 crop factor, that's about 840 mm of lens.

Yesterday brought light snow to the Park, but in the afternoon it switched to rain — heavy at times. But at least it was blissfully warm (like 40 or so). The gray days of Glacier have begun. The sun will shine infrequently from now until April, unless we get another one of those huge arctic air masses. (We usually get one or two a year). The east side isn't as bad, but the wind makes even a cool day feel much colder. The wettest month is actually June, but the days are so long that a break or two in the clouds makes a June day all the better.

Polebridge (and all of Glacier, for that matter) dipped down to below zero over the past few days, including a reading of nine below last night. Nine below! Here's the problem, September was so warm, that the trees didn't really didn't turn. Many of them were still green when this cold snap hit. Now they're simply frozen green trees that will, eventually turn brown. I was out all day yesterday and had planned a couple of hikes but ended up doing only one. There were a host of different bird species, from ducks to Wilson's snipe, huddled in the comparatively warm waters of lower McDonald Creek. With that many birds around I also saw a fair number of predators wanting to snatch them, including a coyote, and three different hawk species — a red tailed, a sharp-shinned and a northern harrier. Here, a northern harrier takes wing above the creek.

In this business you often find things completely by accident. I had stopped at a favorite spot to listen for bugling elk (there's a monster roaming the western hills of Glacier, photographing him has proven years of frustration) when I heard a different kind of howl — a coyote. Not sure who or why this guy was howling, but it never saw me until I came out of the brush, which was a mistake on my part.

Did a cool three-day hike over the weekend which takes you to one of the nicest passes in the Park. Can you guess where it is? Hint; The wind blows so hard, the trail all but disappears.

OK, so yesterday I made a quick three mile or so hike up the Iceberg Lake Trail to this nondescript gully in search of a melanistic (wholly black) chipmunk. Apparently it's been seen by more than a few folks. It was hot and dry and I saw three chipmunks, two golden eagles and a fat old golden mantled ground squirrel in the two and a half hours I sat in that gully.
But none of the chipmunks were black.
None.
Two and a half hours in a gully I sat.
Two and a half.
I’ve lost my mind.

PS — The Little Bear we spoke of a few posts down has made it to the Bronx Zoo via Fed Ex. We are not making this up.

I went out to a favorite meadow last night. The trailhead is clearly marked and pretty easy to get to, but almost no one goes there, probably because if you follow it clear to the end, takes you further and further into the middle of nowhere. Last night, however a woman pulled up and said she was going for a hike and when I first saw her rig I was perturbed that someone would dare hike my trail, but then I saw who it was and she's nice as heck so we exchanged pleasantries and I went on my way and she went hers. I didn't go far, just down the trail and then around the corner. The plan was simple: Sit there awhile and see what would happen, which is a course of action I take more and more often — because it works. On this evening a northern harrier was making sweeping runs across the grass, hunting voles. It pretty much stayed too far out for a photo, but about every half hour it would get just close enough for a decent picture. Not a bad way to blow a couple of hours in Glacier Park.

The west side of the Going to the Sun Road will close to vehicle traffic above Avalanche Creek Sept. 20, so crews can work on the road. Daily newspapers this morning ran headlines that said the "Sun Road to close in September," which was wrong. You can still get to Logan Pass until mid-October, you just have to come in from the east (St. Mary) side. It's one of the nicest drives on the planet, so I can't imagine too many folks will mind the extra miles. We're heading into the glory days of Glacier. September and October are spectacular months — my favorites (my other fav is April, believe it or not). I took this photo of a sunrise in the Bad Rock Canyon en route to Glacier the other day. Not too shabby a way to start the day.

PS — That surviving Old Man Lake bear still isn't in the Bronx Zoo. It's being held at a facility until they can find the right size cage for the critter. As I understand it it, one cage was too big, the other too small for air travel. We'll keep you posted. On the plus side, the Bronx Zoo is not a for-profit Zoo. It's run by the Wildlife Conservation Society, which is a leading world conservation organization.

For the past 10 days I traveled to Buffalo, NY to visit family, particularly my 92 year old grandmother. The drive wasn't very pleasant — 5,000 miles in a small pickup is no fun. But I did shoot this thunderstorm en route between Helena and Bozeman. The trick is to take a long exposure while steadying the camera on the steering wheel in a driving rain. This exposure was at least a couple of minutes.

On Monday, Park rangers shot and killed a 17-year-old sow grizzly near the Old Man Lake campground that had become unafraid of people and habitually entered campgrounds with her cubs, though she never bit or attacked anyone. On one hand, the Park managers were worried about the liability of a bear that they knew could possibly harm someone someday. On the other hand, there are critics, both in and out of the Park Service, that say the bear should have been given another chance. There is a method of hazing bears that does, to a degree, keep them out of trouble. The methods use dogs, "cracker" shells and other methods to scare bears away and teach them that campgrounds aren't places they should be. This bear was hazed using those methods in the summers of '04 and '05. She stayed out of trouble in 07 and 08, but once she had cubs, she went back to her campground ways.

The idea was to kill her and save her yearling cubs. They would be transferred to the Bronx Zoo in New York. But after she was shot, when the one cub was tranquilized, it died. The above photo is the surviving cub, awaiting transfer to New York today.

The effort has turned into a nightmare for the Park and saddened many folks. No one, even the people who made the decision to destroy the sow, are happy with it. Her story is a sad one and long one and we'll go into it in-depth in the next issue, as many facets are still developing.

For me, this taking this photo was simply gut wrenching. I hope I never have to take another like it. Grizzly bears don't belong in cages.

Red tree squirrels aren't just about nuts and seeds. They also love mushrooms. They'll cache them in the nooks of trees. How they know which ones to eat is a mystery to me.

It really is the rare day when I see or run into a bear in Glacier Park. When I do, I talk in low tones and keep a safe distance. I never approach them. Most bears want nothing to do with you. This photo was taken with a 400mm lens, which is a 600mm equivalent on a D300. Having said that, carrying bear spray is highly recommended for that chance close encounter. I could save your life. Black bears are far less aggressive than grizzlies. Right now Glacier is in the process of hunting down a sow griz and her cubs who consistently approached people in backcountry campsites with her cubs. This has been happening for years. The sow will be destroyed, the cubs will go to the Bronx Zoo, that's the plan at any rate. I have mixed feelings about killing a bear that hasn't actually hurt anyone. But you have to think she got food from someone somewhere. Why else would she cozy up to people in campgrounds? The bottomline?
The Park has to be ever vigilant about food storage and food use in the backcountry. I've seen plenty of folks in the backcountry who take no bear spray, no survival gear, nothing. They think because it's called a Park, that it is a Park. But it isn't. It's mostly wilderness and all the creatures, no matter how "friendly" they may appear, are wild. For example, goats, sheep, marmots and deer don't approach people because they "like" us. They approach us because we sweat and when we sweat we release a lot of salt. Glacier's critters are salt and mineral deficient, so they're attracted to you (or, in many cases, your pack). Ditto with feminine products. A bear would love nothing more than to chew on a Maxi-pad. Pack it in, pack it out.

Took a few days off from the Park (three exactly) and then went on a nice evening hike where I saw about a dozen species of birds, including three hawk owls. This one, just before dark, caught a vole, jumped up on this stump and ate it in front of me.

Working on the Sun Road, fall, 07.

The Sun Road got some good news Thursday. It looks like the federal stimulus bill will provide $27.6 million in funding for the highway, which could be almost enough to finish the alpine section of the highway. The bad news this year is that we're hearing a massive avalanche did some significant damage to the highway on a section above Crystal Point that had already been repaired. How bad? Not exactly sure, yet. But it doesn't sound good. Stay tuned.

Montana Sen. Jon Tester talking about the funding: Here

Yesterday Glacier had an impressive little spring snowstorm. Coupled with that was a midge hatch on Lake McDonald (midges are little black bugs that look like mosquitos without the sting). Birds flocked en masse to the lake shore to feed. There were Harris sparrows, varied thrushes, American pipits, robins, white crowned sparrows, gray crowned rosy finches, bluebirds, northern flickers, chestnut backed chickadees and out on the lake was a flock of coots and at least one common loon. Here, a gray crowned rosy finch tucks its head under its wing to take a snooze.

Back in 1929 a big old fire burned through the Apgar area in Glacier. The cedar trees that were killed were logged, but many of the stumps still remain. This stump happens to now be in a beaver pond. I was standing on the edge of the pond for a good 20 minutes before I noticed the goose on its nest. Such is life.

The mountain goats have descended down to the Goat Lick at U.S. Highway 2. Counted 25 yesterday, which is a good number. Looks like many of the young have survived the winter. The older ones are holding up as well. This tough old goat had a horn half broken off. The goats drop down to the cliffs along the Middle Fork to eat mineral soils there (that's right, they eat the dirt). I've actually tasted it and can only say this: It tastes like dirt. The minerals, it is surmised, help with their thick coats as well as replenish minerals that will be lost when they have kids in May. The lick is also home to mule deer, elk, bears and a host of birds. A viewing platform is just off the highway, but the parking lot is still full of snow.

Yesterday was windy in the Park. Took a walk up the Sun Road and the pavement is pretty much clear of ice. Here a Steller's Jay is ruffled by the breeze.

In the old days, when I shot black and white film, this photo was accomplished with a dark red filter. Today, with a digital camera, the scene was shot in color and edited with Photoshop. I suppose it's cheating in a way. But it still looks cool. (I did shoot this with film, but with color slide film using a 16mm fisheye. I like a good old fisheye view once in awhile.) As far as snow in the Park , there's still plenty of it. Plows on the west side are as far as Red Rocks, on the east side they're hitting Two Med, Many Glacier and have also plowed to the closure at Sun Point on the Sun Road. Beyond plowed roads, however, there's still plenty of skiing and snowshoeing.

Plowing began today on the west side of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. Crews should have a swath cut to Avalanche by the weekend, but don't expect to ride your bike on the road — below the snow is a thick layer of ice, that will take a few days to melt off, it it ever warms up. Last night the Park saw about four inches of new snow and a rain-snow mix is in the forecast for the next few days. On the east side, Park plow crews are also working on plowing the Two Medicine Road and they're encountering some very large drifts.

It has been such a cold spring the snow is permanently sticking to the robins ... that's a joke of course, but this robin was an interesting specimen. With permanent white flecks throughout its plumage it really stood out in the crowd of birds feeding in the Park across the street from the house. I've seen photos of albino robins, but I've never seen one like this. Such is nature, I suppose.

Probably... Read the story here. Problem is, legal agreements made with Flathead County a few years back seem to pave the way for the pit. The Park might have some Clean Air Act claims against the pit and perhaps water rights claims as well. What's really needed is a law that prohibit industrial uses within a certain distance of national parks. A state legislator tried that tact a few years ago, but it failed. Perhaps it could be done on the federal level.

A mountain bluebird flies from a fencepost south of Columbia Falls Sunday. The bluebirds have arrived in full force, now that were actually having some truly spring-like weather, with temperatures in the 50s.

A file photo of Plowing the Sun Road, 2008.

Park plow crews were expected to start clearing the Chief Mountain Road this week and the target date for starting the Sun Road on the west side at Lake McDonald Lodge is April 1. April 1 is a Wednesday. Last year the road opened completely on July 2, the latest peacetime opening ever (it opened later one year during WWII.) Last spring was very snowy and cold and while spring is officially a few days away, we haven't had much warm weather. There is fresh snow on the ground this morning, though temps could get into the 50s by the weekend, though it's supposed to rain or snow as well, depending on the elevation.

Despite the cold temperatures last week, the varied thrush are making their way north. They arrive in Glacier National Park in mid-March and are noted for their distinctive call. You can listen to it here. This one was feeding on midges along the snowy shores of Jessup Mill Pond in Creston Thursday, about 45 minutes south of the Park. Your best place to see varied thrush in Glacier is along Upper McDonald Creek near the Avalanche Lake campground.

It got down to 11 below zero in West Glacier last night. At least the wind stopped blowing and the sun came out. When I took this photo about 7 p.m., the temperature was 4 degrees F. This is a pileated woodpecker. You can tell if they're in your woods by the distinctive rectangular holes they leave in trees. Like most woodpeckers, they're year-round residents.

It swims, it flies, it sings. It's the American dipper, a year-round resident of Glacier. This fat gray bird feeds on insects and insect larvae in the stream bottom. A good place to see one is upper McDonald Creek (shown here).

I woke up at 6 yesterday and after making some, tea, starting a fire in the stove and waking up my wife, who was visibily irritated, I decided to get the hell out of Dodge and went to Glacier, where I was able to sneak up on a flock of goldeneyes. Ducks can be comical creatures. When I arrived home, my wife was still visibly irritated, but I was in a good mood. Hey, you can't win them all.

The Boy and I went for a hike along the lake today, with no real purpose other than to get some exercise in. This is the third or fourth weekend in a row with sunshine, which has been a real treat. Ran into these goldeneye ducks. The lake had a big swath of thin ice and these three were feeding in a smallish hole, until they got sick of us and flew away. I turned it into a lesson. With the Boy, the idea is to get him to answer more in-depth questions, or he'll just answer yes or no to everything. So I asked him what do ducks do, and he said "fly," and then I asked him what else do they do and he said, "swim."

Progress comes on wingbeats.

There's a whole lot of things wrong with this photo. Centered subject. Shooting directly into the sun. That's why I like it. Take lots of pictures of your kids. It might seem boring now. But a few years later, they're pretty much priceless.

The ice in this photo has since broken up. For awhile there, it looked like Lake McDonald would freeze over entirely, but we had a cold front blow through from the east last week and it broke up the ice and shoved it to the foot of the lake.

Starlings are generally reviled, being non-native, homely and destructive to native birds. Having said that, they still have a fairly pleasant voice.


Ski conditions update: The base is firm and there's a light dusting of powder. If you haven't skied in Glacier this winter, now is the time to do so (on the west side, at least). On the east side, expect far less snow.

If I stick with Facebook will I see the light? Uh, yeah, right.

About a month ago a friend of mine from back East said, “Join Facebook, everyone is doing it.”
Facebook, for the uninitiated, is a free social network Web site, supported by ridiculous advertising like “Make $92 an hour in a part-time job,” or “Experience the Rolling Razor.”
Yeah, that’s what my butt needs, a rolling razor. And let me tell you, if part-time gigs really paid 92 bucks an hour, who would have a full-time job?
At any rate, the idea of Facebook is to keep in contact with old and new friends without running up an enormous phone bill.
To that end, I suppose it works. But anyone can ask to be your friend and many of the friends I’ve added I haven’t actually spoken with in 20-plus years and some I never talked to even when we were walking down the same halls of the same high school.
Not that they would want to talk to me anyway … take Jody P., for example. In sixth grade I decided to make my own Valentine’s Day cards, seeing as I was both:
A) Cheap.
B) Creative.
Jody’s card on the front, said “You’re Divine.” Open it up and it said, “You swine.”
Then I drew a cute little picture of a pink pig.
Mr. Reek, my sixth grade teacher saw the card, took offense, and sent me to detention. Valentine’s Day 1979 was officially ruined. As for Jody, I can’t say … I mean, she was a little fat, so the swine reference wasn’t that far off the mark.
As my high school career continued, I pretty much offended anyone with two legs at some point, so the fact that anyone would want to be friends with me now is quite astonishing.
Beyond that, however, Facebook can also degenerate quickly into mindless drivel.
For example, as I write this, “Karen is listening to some rowdy Buckeye fans in the basement … Sheri is hoping the weather holds out until school is out … And Amy is a fan of Ed Hardy.”
I know what you’re thinking: Who the hell is Ed Hardy?
On top of all of this is photo after photo of people holding beers, mixed drinks or their kids or sometimes all three.
All of this could be viewed as the sad state of affairs of my generation.
But I have more faith.
I too, will become a fan of Ed Hardy. Just you watch.

I've added a slideshow on pine grosbeaks and Bohemian waxwings, here.
Or just go to the slideshow page.

It continues to be a very pine grosbeak winter. I'm hearing them in the Park, where they're feeding on buds in trees 100 feet tall, but I'm photographing them in town, where they spend the days in bushes and blissfully short trees. They are truly magnificent birds and quite tame. You can get within couple of feet of them.

So I was out in Glacier hiking on Thursday (the snow is as hard as rock, so it was hiking, not snowshoeing, not skiing, though if you want to ski, it's a very, very, fast track) and a cold front blew in. The skies went from blue to mushy gray and the wind picked up and the temperature dropped. So I headed back to town where I could see it was still sunny (and amazingly calm) to look for pine grosbeaks, one of my all time favorite birds. Good places to look for pine grosbeaks in Glacier are Two Medicine in the fall and in the south end of the Park (goat lick) and the Gunsight Pass Trail in the summertime. At any rate, there have been some nice flocks in town, but the light has been awful for days on end, with thick deep gray inversions. (An inversion is when cold air sinks in the valley and warm air rides over top of it. Things are all backwards, I know, but it forms fog, sometimes for weeks on end.)
At any rate, the cold front blew out the fog and the setting sun lit this male pine grosbeak damn near perfect. I took a handful of photos before he flew off.

The last five minutes of the day are often the best in Glacier.

Common red polls are common to Glacier, but can be tough to photograph, namely because they're usually fairly high in the trees, they're small, and they're transients — here one day, gone the next. They're a beautiful bird and the other day I simply lucked out. This one bird was busy feeding in an alder bush and was acclimated. I spent roughly two hours taking eight gigs worth of photos. I always like to try to get songbirds upside down. They do it far more than you'd think.

Got a shot of this buck near Lake McDonald today. Poor guy had shed one antler, was caked with snow, and looking pretty scruffy. The rut takes its toll on bucks, then add a tough winter and it's not an easy existence. He didn't even try to rub the snow off his face. I think he may have been partially blind.

Here's a couple of cool blogs I've been watching the past month or so. One is photog Tony Bynum's site here and the other blog is from the folks who are holed up at the Many Glacier Hotel this winter as the winter caretakers. It's here.

While you folks were nursing hangovers on New Years Day, I was at the dump, thank you very much, photographing gulls. Here is an immature Iceland gull, which has been making local birders swoon since it showed up a few weeks back. I am working on a story and spread for the Hungry Horse News. The Flathead County landfill is a scavenger bird haven, full of ravens, gulls, starlings and the odd bald eagle. The place isn't exactly pleasant, but a heavy and persistent snow at least was covering things up. Many thanks to Dan Casey of the American Bird Conservatory for identifying the gulls as I photographed them and for giving me a tour of the place. The eagle is below. One of the most acclimated bald eagles I've ever seen, the bird could care less about me. It would swoop down and try to grab a gull every once in awhile.