Olympic Peninsula, July 2021: Bogachiel State Park

We camped at Bogachiel State Park one night for convenience as much as anything; it's just three miles from Forks.  But we ended up being pleasantly surprised by the sights along the park's one-mile hiking trail.

The lush vegetation is easily the equal of the famous Hoh Rainforest -- vibrant green everywhere you look.

The park is on the banks of the Bogachiel River, which was teeming with tadpoles.

The rocky river shore was broken by a lone interloping blossom -- this Seep Monkeyflower.

I don't know if the river is normally as low as it was while we were there, but I always enjoy getting right into a body of water for a photo.

So what we thought would just be a place to sleep turned into an unexpected photo opportunity.  Wonderful!

More From Olympic Peninsula:

• Dungeness and Sequim
• Salt Creek Campground
• Tongue Point
• Lake Crescent
• Kalaloch Beaches
• Hoh Rainforest
• Rialto Beach
• Northwest Corner
• Hurricane Ridge
• Camp Forever Young

Aransas NWR, March 2021

I set aside most of my one full day in the Corpus Christi area to visit Aransas National Wildlife Refuge.  I didn't appreciate wildlife refuges as much as I did national parks for a while, but I've come to seek them out almost as frequently in my travels -- especially if I'm hoping to see, well, wildlife.  Funny how that works.

I'm not a storm chaser by any stretch, but I really like the combination of ominous clouds and bare field in this scene from along my drive.

This Wild Turkey hen along the road seemed stuck on the wrong side of the fence, and quite sad about it.

Upon arriving at the refuge I hiked the Rail Trail, and spotted this American Bullfrog in the reeds.

The trail parallels a long, narrow slough that also has American Alligators.

I don't think I've ever seen a leaf that was almost completely white like this Netleaf Hackberry before.

I also hiked the Dagger Point Trail, and had my usual frustrating experience trying to photograph the songbirds that flitted about the forest.  This shot of a Black-throated Green Warbler was my best effort.

The loop trail itself is nice, and not a difficult walk at only about a mile in length.

I got down to the shore at one point and found more trash than natural scenery.  So I made some lemonade with this visual lemon.

I encountered LOTS of butterflies throughout the day.  Most of them were disinterested in landing.  I was fortunate to get a clean shot of this Monarch, because it didn't sit still for very long.

I stopped at an alligator viewing area where there was, indeed, an alligator.  But I was more intrigued by this Spotted Gar.  There's not enough context to tell from the shot, but the fish looked to be at least three feet long.

I got glimpses of other critters while driving and walking around, including White-tailed Deer, American Kestrels, and Whooping Cranes.  But no other compelling photos of anything.  The refuge did seem quite dry, so I wonder if there's more activity when things are wetter.  Whatever the case, I feel the same way about NWRs as other folks do about fishing and golfing -- a bad day at one is still better than any day inside!

Clear Creek Nature Center: October 2017

It had been an unbelievable -- and quite possibly unprecedented -- two months since I had last been out shooting pictures.  TWO MONTHS!!  Between the start of school, summer heat, and so on I just hadn't managed to get out.  It took a three-day weekend to finally get me to shake the dust off a bit.  I enjoyed my initial visit to the Clear Creek Natural Heritage Center so much this past spring, I decided to see how it looked in the fall.

Fall in North Texas isn't doled out in sweeping and majestic helpings.  Rather, it asks one to seek it in the subtle and intimate.

I hadn't planned on shooting backlit leaves.  But they were abundant in the early stretches of my hike, and they were beautiful.

Spiders had done yeoman's work suspending some of the leaves in place, too.

I still haven't learned my Texas plants well enough to identify this one.  But I've always been a sucker for seed pods.

I saw the most butterflies along the edges of the wetland, including this Tawny Emperor...

... and several Monarchs, none of which would pose in the light for me.  I had to jack my ISO up to 3200 to get something decent of this one in the shade.

Dragonflies are too freaky not to shoot, especially when they pose like this Eastern Pondhawk.

The best spot of the day for me was definitely this Green Treefrog, who couldn't have been more than an inch long.  With a steady breeze blowing, I had a hard time getting a still shot of him soaking up the late morning sun.

In the end, I got both a portrait and landscape orientation that I liked!

I had a really unique angle on this Red-Spotted Purple.  I don't think I've ever seen a butterfly with such a badass expression before.

Two great hours out with my camera.  I hope it's not another two months before my next outing!

LLELA: June 18, 2016

I had no plans to go shooting today. The Texas heat is already getting to me, and it's not even officially summer yet. Maybe Tuesday, I thought. Maybe a trip back up to Hagerman NWR, even though Wildlife Drive is partly underwater.

Then Phil Plank sent me a message last night asking if I wanted to go to LLELA with him this morning to look for alligators.

Not even a hesitation.

We actually got our gator sighting pretty quickly.  Michael Fox took us back to the research ponds., and there one was with just his eyes and snout above water.  Looked to be between four and six feet in length, and we'd heard there was a 10-footer around somewhere.  More looking.

The early hour provided some nice dew and some nice backlighting to add a little something different to this dragonfly picture.

Water lilies look beautiful in early morning light, like just about everything else.

I'm impressed that a Blue Dasher can maintain this pose without beating its wings.  Seems like it would require exceptional strength and balance.  Or maybe not for an insect.

Phil spotted this itty bitty American Green Tree Frog sitting in a great big water lily leaf.  Unfortunately, he wouldn't turn around and I wasn't about to wade out into the pond for a better angle.

A number of herons and egrets had congregated in one pond that also had lots of round wire enclosures in it.  Not sure if that particular pond had more fish than others, but we did see a couple of the birds make catches.  This Great Blue Heron was literally the only bird that didn't fly away as we walked past.

I consider female Red-winged Blackbirds a fairly drab bird.  But if one's going to sit in good light and pose for me, I'm going to take her picture.

Another pond seemed to have more bullfrogs than others, all floating with just their eyes above water.  I crept down close to the water's edge for this shot, which startled a frog sitting on the shore, who jumped and startled ME since I assumed it was an alligator about to eat me.

This Eastern Pondhawk appeared to be chowing down on something, but I can't for the life of me figure out what.

Last spot walking back to the car was this spider who had the desiccated husks of past meals still hanging in its web as a sort of grisly warning to other insects.  Which seems counterproductive, since as a spider you sort of want insects to stumble into your web.  Regardless, an interesting scene.

We never did see any other alligators after our first one, although we did see that same alligator again later in our visit when we returned to the same pond.  It wasn't interested in pictures on our second stop, dropping below the surface of the water and leaving a little trail of bubbles as it moved off.  Then the bubbles stopped, and the alligator didn't resurface, and we decided to move away from that pond.

The mercury was already pretty high when we departed a little before 10 a.m.  But I was glad I got in an unexpected photo walk!

Cape Cod Wildlife Areas

Do you know how much my wife loves me?  So much that she not only agreed to drive 500 miles roundtrip so we could visit Acadia National Park on our vacation, she also chose a place for us to stay on Cape Cod that was just minutes away from not one but two nature preserves -- Mass Audubon's Ashumet Holly Wildlife Sanctuary and the Frances A. Crane Wildlife Management Area.

Yeah, I'm pretty spoiled. :)

I decided to visit them both in one morning while Danelle and the kids slept.  First up was Ashumet Holly, where I found a pretty good spot on the shore of Grassy Pond to shoot the sunrise.

The low light through the trees along the Grassy Pond Trail cast dramatic shadows.

Mist is something we don't get a lot of in a semi-arid state like Colorado.  So I found it fascinating to try and capture.

The lush vegetation looked like something out of a fairy tale.  Sadly, no wood nymphs presented themselves.

From Ashumet Holly I went back to our bed & breakfast to pick up my mom's husband Michael, who thought a photo hike sounded pretty good but sunrise not so much.  Then it was on to Frances A. Crane, where the signs warning of deer ticks made me wish I hadn't worn shorts.  But the bumblebees on the butterfly weed were a nice distraction.

The snails here weren't as big as the slugs in Alaska, but still pretty photogenic.

Back to Ashumet Holly again -- that's how close the two areas are.  For most of our walk around Grassy Pond a dead branch was the most interesting thing to see.

Then we started to get better at spotting bullfrogs in the water, and our standards changed.

A good piece of advice I got early on about shooting wildlife: If the eye isn't in sharp focus, nothing else matters.  Frog eyes are especially cool.

I was out for about four hours in all between the two spots, with no real destination in mind at either place.  It was just a matter of wandering around seeing what pictures were waiting to be taken.  And I love my wife for making sure I got that opportunity. :)

Costa Rican Reptiles & Amphibians

One of the aspects of Costa Rica I was most looking forward to was the wildlife viewing, and the country didn't disappoint! We certainly had a little help at La Paz Waterfall Gardens thanks to features like their ranarium (frog exhibit). Taking one of their nighttime tours of the free range area was critical, as the little critters were much more active after dark. Danelle took this great shot of an hourglass tree frog ... ... and another of this fellow who I think is a golden-eyed leaf frog, but it's hard to be completely sure from this angle. Taryn made a great find in the changing area of the Eco Termales Hot Springs -- a glass frog on a shower door with a clutch of eggs stuck to her back. Our guide and driver, Nancy and Raoul, orchestrated an effort to move it outside to safer ground. A cocoon made out of leaves was used to carry the mother-to-be and her precious cargo. And even though the eggs fell off in transit, Nancy was able to reapply them with a twig. Huzzah for teamwork! A common basilisk, also known as a Jesus Christ lizard due to its ability to run on water. We saw this young male and a ton of his kin on our "safari float" down the Penas Blancas River. An emerald basilisk on the shores of the Penas Blancas. A spectacled caiman soaking up some sun. Green iguanas apparently come in a variety of shades, including orange. Restaurante Las Iguanas lived up to its name, with a number of the lizards like this intimidating-looking fellow roaming around the edges of the property. A colorful Central American whiptail at Arenal Hanging Bridges. We saw a three-foot boa constrictor on the side of the road as we were driving back to Arenal Observatory Lodge one evening. A local boy had apparently caught it and kept it for a week, then thought better of having a large snake for a pet and had just released it back into the wild. A large American crocodile guarded a beach near where the main waterway through Tortuguero National Park emptied into the Caribbean Sea. Tortuga Lodge had a number of hiking trails on the property, including the aptly named Poison Dart Frog Trail. I saw about 10 of these very tiny strawberry poison dart frogs on the hike I took, which was shorter than I'd originally intended thanks to two main factors. One was the mosquitoes who laughed at my bug repellent and swarmed me whenever I stopped to take a picture, and the other was a very large shin-level spider web that I walked through along the trail. I didn't stop to see if it had an equally large spider in it, but instead found an immediate shortcut back to the lodge!