Hey 2010! Don't walk away from me!

(Bighorn sheep in Northern Montana, Green Honeycreeper from Trinidad)

Wait what? 2010 where do you think you're going? It was a pretty fancy year, I'm not gonna lie. Zac and I were in Trinidad and Tobago when 2010 started, which was well, a pretty ideal way to spend New Year's Eve. And then from there, we went everywhere in between, which is obvious (and confusing) from my blog posts. I do not have the ability to stay in one place for more than a few months at a time. It just doesn't happen. I just looked at the last few pages of my blog and each post is from like 10 different states. Sometimes I confuse myself. It's all so confusing! (Hermit Thrush from West Texas below and Red-tailed boa constrictor from Tobago)

Anyway, I think I'll do different 'best of' bloggity blogs and drag them out over a week or two (since I'm good at that, dragging stuff out). So for now, here's a few of my favorite shots from this year. Happy 2011! And thanks to all my blog buddies for being fans of Count your chicken, we're taking over! :) Scenic Sunday Camera Critters

(White-bearded Manakin from Trinidad and golden-mantled ground squirrel from Yosemite)

After the Fog

Perazzo, one of the field sites in the Sierra. From the old point and shoot, taken in August. Sweet sweet office space. Weekend Reflections Watery Wednesday

Gypsum Goodness (Day 21)

Got out of Carson National Forest bright and early, before the sun came up. We stopped in Taos in an attempt to find wireless somewhere. Took a little while but we found a place and I drank an excessive amount of coffee and proceeded to have some pretty intense coffee crazy shakes. Whoa! Skywatch

When we got to White Sands a few hours later, we found a juvenile Yellow-headed Blackbird (more pictures here) near the trailhead. Weird place for him to be, but he seemed to make do and was foraging. He was gone the next morning, so that was a good sign that he took off to a more appropriate place.

We hiked in a couple miles and set up the tents as the sun was setting. White Sands has some pretty impressive sunsets and sunrises. No doubt about that. Crazy light and colors all over the place.

Thinking 55 degrees was going to be balmy compared to the low 30's we'd been camping in, I made the mistake of just bringing a sleeping bag liner and not my bag and I somehow forgot socks (I hiked in chacos) so...I was pretty ridiculously cold (I brought my bag the next night). I got out a few times during the night to check out the night sky (badass) and saw a few shooting stars. Gahhh! Such an awesome place! (A lot of these pictures are pretty high ISO shots, like the two below especially, obviously. I'm surprised I could hold the camera steady enough for the below one to work at all, nice)

I've Got My Eye on You

Wordless

Gunnison's Confusing Clouds Part II (Day 20)

8 Sept.

My towhee buddies woke me up again this morning. Much better than an alarm clock! I looked outside my tent and among the many birds, there were 3 chipmunks, a rabbit and 2 deer right there. Good stuff.

There were some nice clouds rolling in and the light was all crazy weird so I grabbed the camera and wandered around for a while. Found a Dusky Grouse (many more pictures of this lovely lady here). I went for a quick hike but got stuck in rain a couple times. The sky was having issues with decision making. Fog, sun, rain, blue sky...all of it. (more crazy sky shots here)

I got back to the tent around 0930 and started packing stuff up. I would have liked to stay in Gunnison for another day or 3 but again...the weather forecast was grim. We drove to Taos, New Mexico and encountered some gnarly storms on the way down. The torrential rain didn't make driving all that enjoyable.

The plan was to camp at Carson National Forest and we got there with enough daylight to find a place but had some issues actually finding a spot. All the official campgrounds were already closed (or flooded) for the season. Eventually we found an off the grid place, though I had to take my civic on some totally sketchy forest service dirt roads. I beat that car up so much but he managed to handle it without too much damage (not sure how...shocking, really).

We were camping fairly close to town and those FS roads definitely got some use, that was obvious. I always hate camping in these spots because they draw in the redneck jackasses who just go out there to get wasted and trash the place. We tried 4 spots before we found one that wasn't covered with beer cans and bottles and crap like that. So it always weirds me out a little bit, wondering if some meth-head fool is gonna come driving up, ya know what I mean?

But alas, there were no tweaked out creeps that crashed our spot. I did hear some loud grunting and snorting in the middle of the night though. Hmm. We were out of there by 6 am the next morning and on our way to White Sands National Monument. We had wanted to stay in Carson and hike up Wheeler Peak (highest point in NM) but the weather didn't feel like cooperating. Outdoor Wednesday

Merry Happy!

Merry Christmas! I don't have any cliche winter-y scenes for today (though it did try to snow in Nashville, where we are currently, last night), so this handsome male Vermilion Flycatcher will have to meet your approval! Saw him in Big Bend last week. Vermilions make me happy :) Hope everyone has a great holiday!! Bird Photography Weekly SOOC Ruby Tuesday

It Is What It Is

Black and White Weekend

Aransas National Wildlife Refuge

(Least Grebe)

Zac and I were at Aransas National Wildlife Refuge recently to scope out Whooping Cranes (saw 2 of 'em, life bird, big bird, awesome bird). I think we had around 70 species for the few hours we were there. Lots of alligators too. And four different snake species, sweet! As much time as I've lived and spent in Texas, I had never been to Aransas before, which is just ridiculous really. Here's a few bird buddies. Gators and snakes later. Weekend Reflections Camera Critters

(Killdeer above, Blue-winged Teals below)

Black Canyon: Yellow Jacket Swarms and Hedgehog Rocks (Day 19)

7 Sept

Two Green-tailed Towhees under my tent vestibule woke me up - little goofballs! Made an exceedingly strong cup(s) of coffee and oatmeal while watching my little bird buddies. After we got our stuff together, we drove the 2 hours to the North Rim side of the park for an 8 mile hike. I parked Vladimir and we were quickly mobbed by yellow jackets. We could hardly get out of the car - they had surrounded it. I think something similar has happened in past nightmares of mine. I really don't do well with buzzing. Buzzing doesn't do well for my sanity. Managed to get out of the car eventually and the yellow jackets were just freaking swarming it. Hundreds of 'em. Made it really difficult to get backpacks and stuff out. Yikes. They were snarfing all the dead bugs off the bumper. Huh. Interesting. (I looked at the bumper when we got back and all of the bugs were gone)

The hike was awesome and the only people we passed were three of them on our way back, close to the trailhead. Excellent. Again, the Black Canyon is just plain impressive. Zac and I are going to have to go back and do a few day trip into the canyon. Too much fun not to!

The light wasn't so great on the hike, so I didn't take too many landscape shots. Still an exceedingly beautiful place though. Thunderheads were coming in once we got to the top so we hiked back fairly quickly. The rain held off until after we made dinner luckily and the cloud cover made it less chilly than the night before which was kinda nice. The plan for a short evening hike was thwarted by the rain, so I got some reading done in my tent. (doesn't that lichen covered rock on the bottom look exactly like a hedgehog??)

Stop Being So Cute!

It's too much! (Pika in the Sawtooth Mountains)

Black Canyon's Welcoming Committee (Day 18)

6 Sept.

Left Grand Junction and got to Black Canyon of the Gunnison in the afternoon. I approved immediately. What an impressive place! Put our tents up and were soon greeted by Green-tailed and Spotted Towhees, Wilson's Warblers (2nd photo), a Hammond's Flycatcher (1st photo), and a few deer right next to our tents. Nice! Pretty happening little spot. Checked the park out a little bit before it got dark but didn't have much time before that happened. Rather fond of this place. Big ol' playground! Outdoor Wednesday

(Spotted Towhee above, Mule deer below)

Tufted Flycatcher in Big Bend!

Well then! We did indeed get to see the Tufted Flycatcher this week while we were hanging out in Big Bend National Park. For all you birders out there, you probably know about this guy. For the non-birders...Tufted Flycatchers don't generally make their way up to North America. This is only the 5th record of one in the United States (they occur in middle/high elevations in Mexico down to South America).

This is the second record for Big Bend (in West Texas, on the Rio Grande) and was found about a month ago. We spotted him pretty easily - he was flying around like a hyperactive phoebe snagging bugs. (it was like a flycatcher rally...vermilions, a dusky and gray, ash-throated, and say's, eastern, and black phoebes all around). Really, really cute little guy. Quite the looker. I mean, come on, look at that crest!

Anyway, Zac and I were both pretty excited to see him make an appearance in one of our favorite places. Not a life bird (we saw one in Costa Rica in 2008) but new for the US. Very cool stuff.

(I shot these pictures with a rented Sigma 500mm OS. I mentioned a couple weeks ago that my (non-OS) Sigma 500 kinda crapped out on me. I kinda fell in love with this new lens). Bird Photography Weekly My World Nature Notes