Bald eagle, Yellowstone National Park

For as bird-centric as my photography often is, I photographed very few avian subjects during my trip to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks. I had hoped to find more birds, but the large terrestrial megafauna were just too amazing to look away from. I did however, snap a few shots of a Clark's nutcracker (a fascinating bird with a really awesome memory!) as well as this bald eagle perched in a tree in Hayden Valley. I had really hoped to see some trumpeter swans, but that just wasn't in the cards this time. There's always next time though!



As for this eagle, it was perched in the top of a tree and was watching the water below. It had drawn a pretty good crowd, but since it was on the opposite side of the river, it seemed not to care too much about all the people watching it. What it did care about though, is the red-tailed hawk that must have had a nest close by. In the top photo in the post, the eagle is calling out at the hawk just before the hawk flew straight at it and scared it away. It was quite a sight to see a smaller bird come swooping in at high speed, and the bald eagle wanted no part of it.

View more photos of raptors in my Birds of Prey gallery.

Submitted to World Bird Wednesday -- Follow the link to check out this week's posts.

Portrait of a mother moose, Grand Teton National Park

One of my favorite wildlife encounters from our trip across the west was finding this female moose and her calf in the pre-sunrise light. The mother was beautiful (as you can see) and the calf was full of energy, and continually bounced around the sagebrush. They were a delight to watch!

View more photos of moose in my Moose Gallery

Pronghorn buck, Yellowstone National Park

A dominant pronghorn buck watches over his harem near the Gardiner entrance to Yellowstone National Park. It was a lot of fun to see this harem on a daily basis while coming into the park, and this buck seemed to take pretty good care of them. While the females happily fed fairly close to the road, he only occasionally come close to the group of onlookers, and he usually didn't stay close for long. He was quite a handsome buck though, and hopefully he was able to defend his harem during the upcoming rut.

Visit my pronghorn gallery.

Bison, Grand Teton National Park

While we certainly found bison on every day of our Grand Teton and Yellowstone trip, one of the best encounters came in the late afternoon in Grand Teton National Park. The large herd that resides there had moved fairly close to the road, and they stayed there resting, feeding, fighting, and running around until long after the sun had set. These are such remarkable animals, and it's interesting to think about what the landscape must have looked like a few hundred years ago when a few million were still roaming the west!

View more photos of the largest land animal in North America in my Bison Gallery.

Moose pair in the sagebrush, Grand Teton National Park

Our moose encounters in Grand Teton National Park were one of the highlights of our entire road trip. It was amazing to see these huge animals up close, and I'm really excited that we were able to find them feeding in the sagebrush on a few occasions. This post is a series of four photos of a pair of moose that we watched on our final morning in the park. We started the day by finding them off in the middle of the sagebrush at dawn, but they slowly worked their way closer to us in the morning light.



We were there just before the start of the rutting season, so most of the bulls we saw still had velvet on their antlers. However, on our last morning there we caught this bull with mostly clean antlers (you can see a bit of velvet still hanging down by his face in these shots). He was clearly still a bit itchy, and he spent a fair amount of time scratching on any solid object he could find. I was so amazed at how large these animals really are, and they really are a sight to behold. I know it looks like he's aggressively coming at me in the frame below, but he was just interested in feeding in that brighter patch of vegetation.



Unfortunately, for a lot of the shots on this trip (including many of the shots from our encounter with this pair) I really had to jack up the ISO, which introduced quite a bit of noise. It was a tricky trip in that regard, with a lot of shooting right near dawn and before the sun had made it over the mountains. It's a delicate balance with my gear, confounded by the fact that the low-light conditions challenges the autofocus on my lens (f/6.3 at 500mm), but I decided that I'd rather have a chance for sharp shots with noise instead of blurry shots due to slower shutter speeds with less sensor noise. Overall it seemed to work out ok, but the amount of shots that I've culled due to technical quality does speak volumes to what having a faster long-lens would allow you to do.



View more photos of these impressive animals in my new Moose Gallery.