Like the city they call home, Butte pigeons thrive in adversity. There they manage to propogate in astonishing numbers despite living in an environment that is, more often than not, entirely hostile to them.
The next time he saw it, he was luckier. His shot hit the beast. According to Israel's son, the animal tried to attack the Hutchins family in its last moments, tearing through a half-inch rope in one champing bite. He said it bled to death trying to reach and attack the family.
Montana’s native tribes relied on the bounty of bison in nearly every aspect of their daily lives. In addition to depending on them as a primary food source, native peoples also developed ingenious methods that enabled them to use every part of these colossal one-ton giants.
I drop my backpack in my office and start my rounds, as I call them, checking on each and every animal including fish, frogs, salamanders, snakes, ground squirrels (if they’re not hibernating), river otters, raptors, gray wolves and grizzly bears to make sure all is well.
What is it about owls that intrigues us? Is it their brilliant yellow eyes and their bulky looking bodies? Maybe it’s their elusiveness, the fact that they’re not readily seen like other birds of prey. Photographing them and creating compositional impact
Montana may not strike you as the perfect place to spend the winter, but every year thousands of travelers disagree. Most of the feathered ones from the north flit past, true, but others recognize the Treasure State as the ultimate place to chill out for months. They migrate here every year: rough-legged hawk, snowy owl, northern shrike, common and hoary redpoll, American tree sparrow, Bohemian waxwing, snow bunting and Lapland longspur.
Sign of North American beavers—whittled sticks, canals, dams, lodges—are conspicuous, but the animals themselves are relatively quiet, nocturnal, and discreet. So take heart: you are not alone if you reflexively stop to admire the singular textures of a wetland, only to find yourself nearly submerged in surprise at the SLAAP! from the tail of the habitat’s maker.
Over the past decades, morel hunting has changed quite a bit. In the 1980s, the fire reports were issued in single line entries, with the name of the fire, township and range (later to lat/long coordinates), aspect, slope, elevation, vegetation cover, and start date. Go get ‘em, boys! That was all you had to go on. So out we went, tracing our way along whatever roads were open to get as close to the start point as we could, scanning the ridges for brown or red trees to locate the burn site.
Its scientific name—Gulo gulo, Latin for glutton—reflects its striking character as a ferocious predator that can contend with prey many times its size. Stories tell of the 30-pound wolverine successfully hunting injured caribou and chasing grizzlies away from their kill, though during the summer months these animals most commonly feed on small mammals such as rabbits or rodents, as well as plants and berries.
I’ve seen a dozen mountain lions in the wild but this was the first and only opportunity I ever had to get a photo. I was so excited to get that shot that the first twenty-five images were out of focus. Thankfully, I had the foresight to look at a shot and was able to refocus and shoot again before the cat disappeared.
