Snail supper
29/01/12 20:45
I’m working on this short video on American dippers and I was shooting one the other day that appeared to be eating small stones. Perhaps it’s for its crop, I thought. But that was an awfully big stone for a relatively small bird. When I blew up the photo, it became evident that they weren’t stones, they were snails.
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A touch of winter
24/01/12 07:40
A little winter finally has arrived in Glacier. The high country last week saw more than 20 inches of snow, lower elevations about a foot over the past week. Many Glacier dipped to 22 below one day, but it stayed in the teens west of the divide. This week is calling for rain at lower elevations and snow at higher elevations. Sounds like a mess. The deer around Apgar this season are decidedly skittish. Can’t blame them. There’s a pack of wolves roaming the hills and a family of mountain lions as well. So much as break a twig and the deer are off and running.
Evening light
17/01/12 07:07
Poaching in Glacier
11/01/12 10:27
The elk herd at St. Mary, in this photo from March, 2007.
I always thought that allowing open use of guns in national parks was a really bad idea. The old law allowed guns, but they had to be unloaded and cased or stored in a trunk. Now we get a poaching story like this.
Under the new law, rangers can’t even stop someone from driving around the park with a loaded gun on the seat. While details haven’t been released, I doubt whoever did this even got out of their vehicle.
I’m a gun owner and an occasional hunter, I have nothing against legally taking game, but the uber gun lobby strong-armed this new law through as a rider on a spending bill. Congress needs to reform its rules to disallow riders on bills that aren’t similar subject matter. Allowing guns in national parks wouldn’t have passed on its own merit (Although all of Montana’s delegation supported the measure.)
Even, the Montana Legislature, which is definitely pro-gun in every regard, wouldn’t allow a rider like that. It’s against their rules.
As a side note: If you’ve never visited Glacier and you’re worried about a wildlife attack, carry bear spray. Don’t bring your gun. Bear spray is more effective and far safer.
Jenny M hit the nail on the head
04/01/12 20:57
Jenny M got the correct answer (see the comments in the post below). They’re trumpeter swans and the gray ones (immature swans) are called cygnets. Trumpeters are slowly, but surely, making a comeback in western Montana. Over the past several years there have been reintroduction efforts in the Blackfoot and Mission Valleys. It’s tough to say the origin of Glacier’s swans. This particular family group had no bands. In the winter, they come and go in the Park. Sometimes you’ll be graced by their presence for just a few days, other times for weeks. In Lake McDonald they’ll frequent shallow bays feeding in weed beds. There is no finer sight. Jenny M, e-mail me your address if you want your print...
Name that butt
29/12/11 20:33
Merry Christmas
25/12/11 16:20
The shortest day of the year
22/12/11 17:35
Simple gifts, the video
17/12/11 09:26
A local pastor, David Merkel of the United Methodist Church in Columbia Falls, put together this cool montage of my photos accompanied by the song “Simple Gifts.” David is a talented piano player. I love that song. The concert, which included this piece, raised $11,000 for CASA for kids. It’s an organization that pairs advocates for children in domestic court cases.
Timing, or lack thereof
10/12/11 10:40
Last night I waited an hour and half for the clouds to break. They almost did, but not quite — the summits of the Peaks surrounding Lake McDonald never broke through. Still, I made some interesting pictures. The nice thing about shooting with an M9 is it’s a rangefinder — with no mirror, you can hand-hold at slow shutter speeds. I believe this photo was taken at 1/8th of a second. I suppose I’ve mentioned the virtues of a rangefinder in the past, but it bears repeating. Last night the moonrise, if it had set up without clouds, would have been perfect, because the moon rose almost the same time as the sun set. Tonight I may get another opportunity, but right now there is a dense, frigid fog.
Moonrise
09/12/11 09:10
How sweet it is
08/12/11 07:40
It’s not very often that you see a skunk in Glacier. In fact, this is the first one I’ve ever seen in the Park (I’ve seen a few outside the Park, namely in my yard). But I’d been noticing skunk tracks on my hikes lately, so I knew one was around. Last night I ran into it as it sniffed around the ice and dug up grubs from the banks of McDonald Creek.The tricky part is to get close enough for a picture, but far enough away so that you don’t disturb the skunk and get sprayed. I’m not a big fan of skunks. I’ve been sprayed more than once — one summer I live trapped eight of them out of my yard. It was no fun.
Dumb-ass luck
05/12/11 07:16
I always pay attention to the chickadees. Not only are they affable birds, but other species, like golden crowned-kinglets, hang with them. Kinglets are much more difficult to photograph in Glacier. It always seems like it’s too dark or they move at the last instant. The other day, by dumb-ass luck, I caught this chickadee eating some snow.
November light
28/11/11 13:08
The thing about November is you can never count on it. We hiked into the Belton Hills yesterday to watch the sunset and just as things were getting nice the clouds rolled in and the wind picked up. The past week in Glacier has been gray, sometimes wet, but fairly pleasant, with highs in the 30s and 40s. After a cold start, November ended up being fairly typical, which is to say, it was dark. The sun doesn’t get very high in the sky in November and the days are short. There’s lots of snow in the high country. The west Flattop SNOTEL site has 44 inches of snow as I write this. November is my least favorite month in Glacier. December is a close second. You might think January would be up there, but not so. By the end of January, the days are getting noticeably longer, even if it is cold. February gets even better, and by early March, the first migrant birds are returning and you occasionally get a breath of spring. June can be the most depressing, because while the days are long, it rains a lot.
Brrrrr
19/11/11 19:12
Winter (arriving)
14/11/11 07:04
This photo makes this Glacier scene a lot more pleasant than it actually was — a stiff wind, with snow squalls dominated the weather most of the weekend. Winter has definitely arrived and even colder temps — in the single digits — are expected for the upcoming weekend. Many Park roads have closed to winter levels, though the Camas Road was open and it wouldn’t surprise me if the Park plows the road to Avalanche for awhile because of construction activity on the bridge there.
Moonrise
11/11/11 07:43
Rocky Point
02/11/11 07:42
Mystery Lake 2
26/10/11 07:28
October scene
20/10/11 18:27
The Leica 21 mm f2.8 aspherical is a great lens for tight landscapes. It’s sickeningly sharp and the “star” effect of the sun is a mark of quality. Here is one of my favorites from yesterday, photographing a backcountry lake in Glacier National Park as the sun went down. The wind was absolutely howling. Can you name the lake?
The backwater
16/10/11 08:09
Evening light in a Glacier backwater. There’s been great news for the North Fork.
See the story I wrote below for the Hungry Horse News
A bill was introduced into the British Columbia legislature last week that would ban mining and oil and gas exploration in the Flathead River drainage.
The bill, called the “Flathead Watershed Area Conservation Act” was introduced by Steve Thomson, the minister of forests lands and natural resource operations for the province.
The ban codifies an earlier Memorandum of Understanding between the province and the Montana to ban mining in the region.
The MOU, negotiated in 2010 by Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer and British Columbia Premier Gordon Campbell broke 30-plus years of hostility between the two entities over mining the Flathead. B.C. mining interests through the years have proposed a host of mining and energy exploration in the river drainage just north of Glacier National Park.
The latest was an open pit coal mine proposed by the Cline Mining Co. in the Foisey Creek drainage. Foisey Creek is the headwaters of the Flathead, which is called the North Fork of the Flathead when it reaches Montana. The river is also the western boundary of Glacier National Park.
Unlike the U.S., where the federal government controls most lands with mining claims, in British Columbia, the province owns most of the public land and has the final say on most aspects of energy exploration. The province owns virtually all the land — called crown lands — in the Canadian Flathead.
"Governor Schweitzer takes pride in the relationships he has built in the neighboring provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia,” said Schweitzer spokeswoman Sarah Elliott. “We are aware the legislation has been introduced in British Columbia, the governor respects their process and there have been continued contacts between our offices."
Separately, Montana Sens. Max Baucus and Jon Tester have sponsored legislation that would ban future mining on federal lands on the U.S. side of the border. They have also been working on retiring existing leases in the watershed as well.
Over the past few years, companies have voluntarily retired more than 200,000 acres of oil and gas leases on the Flathead National Forest in the North Fork.
In addition, the Nature Conservancy of Montana and British Columbia are undergoing a campaign to raise $10 million to compensate existing leaseholders, like Cline, for expenses they've incurred for exploration and other development prior to the MOU being struck.
That campaign is expected to take three years, with the Montana portion being $5 million.
To date, the Conservancy has raised $6.5 million in pledges and commitments.
"We've had an incredibly positive reaction to this campaign," said Bebe Crouse, director of communications for the Conservancy in Montana. "It's all private funds."
The Canadian law is expected to pass, but some conservation groups in Canada claim more work needs to be done. They would like to see an expansion of Waterton Park from the Continental Divide to the North Fork.
“This legislation does not protect the Flathead from logging in a proposed national park, trophy hunting, new road access and quarrying,” said Casey Brennan, Southern Rockies Program Manager for Wildsight, a Canadian environmental group. “Preventing mining and oil and gas development is a great first step, but real conservation is permanent protection as a national park and wildlife management area."
The cabin
10/10/11 13:13
A happy accident
08/10/11 09:50
The other day I got back to the truck from a short but pleasant hike. I had taken almost no photos, things just didn’t come together, as things are bound to do. But back at the truck there was a male Franklin’s grouse pecking in the dirt road. I was happily taking pictures when a car came zipping around the corner and stopped. Of course, the grouse flushed into the woods.
“What are you doing?” the guy behind the wheel asked.
“I was taking a picture of that grouse before you almost ran him over,” I said.
The guy behind the wheel was Jake Bramante, who is actually a nice guy without a job who is trying to hike all the trails in Glacier National Park in one season. He’s supposed to wrap up his journey next week.
As it turned out, Jake’s run-in with my grouse was fortuitous. The grouse went just into the woods, hopped on a log and made for a much nicer picture.
Franklin’s grouse are probably the most tame grouse in the Park. I suspect in the settler days, they kept more than one person alive — they simply don’t fly away. And if they do, they usually don’t go very far.