Over Beartooth Pass--More Rodents!

There is something deeply disorienting about climbing high, high up over a mountain pass--let's say Beartooth Pass, between Montana and northern Wyoming--and going from hot hot summer, strip-off-your-shirt summer--to walls and fortresses of lingering snow, to American pipits scrounging snowflies, for Lord's sake, because there's nothing much else to eat.

If the hairpin turns and the million-foot dropoffs on the road weren't enough, that simple dissonance would be scary enough for a person like me, who is so tied to the seasons and the particular light of a particular time of year that I really don't know what to do with myself when everything is upside down and we're making snowballs in mid-June.

Snowfields, just now melting off. And mountain bluebirds, giving their low chortle and floating from boulder to boulder, just to bring me to my knees.

Mountain bluebirds in hard mountain light and thin mountain air, bolts of cobalt and cerulean, straight shots to the heart.


We get back in the car and OK now I'm a little freaked out by this.

I mean, we had a whole winter of this, well, nearly this, and I thought I could put my white knuckles away. Hon, will you please drive? I'm done.

Whoa. Car coming. Let's push on, get down to some altitude that makes sense for an Appalachian Ohio girl. I'm feeling a little woozy, here on top of the planet.

I know what will fix me. More cute rodents.

We offered Corn Nuts and almond bits, but sunflower seeds were the favorite. We looked him up in our Kaufman Field Guide to Mammals of North America.

Wrong page. Them's Californy chiptymunks.

Least chipmunk, Tamias minimus. Mmm, how cute! And teeny. And snappy and bold.

But wait! there's more. A golden-mantled ground squirrel, Spermophilus lateralis, such an arresting HUGE creature that it elicited gasps of "What the heck is THAT?" from us. The thing was at least 10" long and fat, fat, fat. I immediately christened it the Sumo Chipmunk.

No secret how it got that fat.

Gimme a peanut, now.

Dead heat between the yellow-bellied marmot and the Sumo Chipmunk for favorite rodent of the trip. He's just a guinea pig in chipmunk's clothing.

We made it through Beartooth Pass and happily descended into... YELLOWSTONE!!

Before we start wallerin' around in Yellowstone Park, I have a few pressing Ohio matters to share. Pawpaws and a spectacular caterpiggle... Speaking of Ohio matters, don't miss the next Ohio Ornithological Society conference October 8-10 at the Radisson Eastlake (Cleveland). Field trips, crazy great migration birding, even a Lake Erie 'pelagic' trip. People--it's an inland sea! and it has some surprisingly great birds. Go here for details.

More Adorable Rodents of Montana

Looking at my recent entries, it seems I have developed a preoccupation with rodents. The truth is that I like rodents as well as I like any wildlife. Mostly I just like any wildlife that lets me get real close with my camera.

I'm remembering a Patton Oswalt line. "I like porn. Because I can get porn."

But I do like yellow-bellied marmots, and not just because I can get pictures of them. A marmot is nothing more than a nicely colored woodchuck that lives in a group. And living in groups, yellow-bellied marmots (Marmota flaviventris) are a lot more noticeable than our solitary eastern woodchuck (Marmota monax) is. Eastern woodchucks generally reveal themselves only first thing in spring, when they're ratty and moth-eaten and hungrily vacuuming up clover in tiny median strips, or the rest of the year, when we find them taking dirt naps on highway shoulders. Marmots are also bolder, perhaps because having many eyes watching out makes them feel more secure in revealing themselves. Perhaps they aren't as heavily persecuted in the wild West as woodchucks are back East.

My affection for woodchucks is sincere; I have a number of wonderful woodchuck stories. The people who lived on our Ohio farm well before we bought it used to take in injured and orphaned wildlife. I'm thinking it's something in the water. Anyway, they had a pet woodchuck that loved to play. Its favorite game was to be slid on its back across the kitchen floor, caught, and slid right back, like a hockey puck. You have to love a rodent that likes to do that.

On our way to Yellowstoen, we stopped at Pompey's Tower, a state monument to Lewis and Clark along the Missouri River in Montana.

William Clark's signature, on the rock of a stack called Pompey's Tower. It was named for the toddler son of French-Canadian expedition cook Charbonneau and his Native American wife, Sacajawea. Lewis and Clark took a huge shine to the child, who they nicknamed Pompey, and named this promontory after him. He was the expedition mascot. I would think a toddler would be a bit of a liability on the push into the Northwest Territory, but Sacajawea must've stocked up on disposables and Tupperwares full of Cheerios before they took off. By all accounts Pompey was a happy baby, even though he was probably chewing on a bit of dried bison sinew instead of Pepperidge Farm Flavor Blast Pizza Goldfish.

Wild rock pigeons flapped and moaned from their nests along the flank of Pompey's Tower.


At the park below, we ran into a little colony of yellow bellied marmots.

They had burrows at the base of the huge cottonwoods along the river.

They peeked out and then came out, perhaps to see if we had any food to offer. Note the white brow band--distinctive.

Also distinctive is the pot-bellied profile when the animal sits up to take a look around. Awwww!

At this point, I was jonesing bad for a fix o' Chet Baker, having been away from him for a whole week.
So when a marmot spraddled out in what we call the frogleggin' pose, I melted.

They seemed to know I meant them no harm (or know that I thought they were meltingly adorable) and relaxed visibly after a little while.

At last, a little babeh marmot peeked out from his cottonwood fortress. Melting, complete. Just another bit of fauna I would love to have in Ohio. Magpies and marmots.

Tanagers and Badgers, Oh My!

In this cold, rainy spell, our Montana friends had a big flock of western tanagers in their backyard, feasting on suet cakes. What an amazement, to see them whirling around the feeder, a blur of orange, yellow and black.

Female western tanagers are more modestly attired.

No modesty in this rooster ring-necked pheasant! Another bird I could never take for granted, extravagant in its beauty. I don't mind that they came from China. I'm simply amazed that they took hold here.

Speaking of amazed...one of my unspoken goals for this trip was to see a badger's face. I'd seen their disappearing carpetlike bodies as they dove into North Dakota ditches. And I'd sadly stroked the fur of one who'd been shot at the mouth of her den, doubtless leaving kits to starve. Oh, I wanted to see their faces, alive and doing badger things.

While on the road to John and Durrae's, we were advised to be on the lookout for a badger den where they frequently see the animals during the day. We found the den...and there were two little faces at the entrance.
Oh joy, oh rapture. Badgers, alive, beautiful, doing what badgers do.

Though we kept a discreet distance and viewed them through the spotting scope, the female badger seemed perturbed by our scrutiny. She took her kit up the long hillside and under a barbed wire fence into another pasture, throwing dirty looks over her shoulder the whole way.

The kit is in front, sniffing the air...you will need to click on the photo to see its face. Badgers!
What a thrill. One of my most-wanted North American animals, finally seen well. I wish we'd make more room for badgers in this world. They are the coolest of weasels, great broad-shouldered trundlebeasts.

I turn now to the better glass of Bill's fixed 300 mm. Canon telephoto with its 1.4 doubler for these two shots:

Here's Mom in lovely profile, and the kit turning away. Badgers have the neatest ears, great big things set low on the sides of the head, as befits a burrowing animal. I'm sure there are neat adaptations to keep from getting dirt down in them, too.

See how the mom looks faded, while the kit looks newly-laundered?

File this next photo under "you had to be there." While the badgers were trundling up the hill, a western tanager came down and landed on a boulder to watch them pass by. You can just make out the grayish spot of their backs to the left of the tanager. It's not much of a photo, I know, but the waving flax and gray-green grasses, the undulating badgers and the brilliant color accent of the tanager all combined to lay me low. You really did have to be there, in that fresh cool wind, seeing live badgers humpeting up a hill.


I love Montana.

If you're in the Parkersburg, West Virginia area this weekend, please come by tomorrow, Friday, September 10, to see our new quintet, The Rain Crows, perform from 7 pm-10pm in the Blennerhassett Hotel's lovely rose garden. Bill and I have been working doubletime to pull together a very promising lineup, which includes bassist Craig Gibbs, formerly of Hoodoo Hand, and two former Nashville session musicians, singer/keyboardist Wendy Eller and drummer Jeff Eller. We're rehearsing as you read this, no doubt. Hope to see you there!

Magpie Madness

How better to define and excite a beautiful landscape than with a bird of paradise?

Those who live among black-billed magpies may become inured to their charms. It would take centuries to inure me to a bird this magnificent.

John and Durrae moved to Bozeman from Pennsylvania. They've lived here almost as long as we've lived in Ohio--17 years or so. But they still love the magpies.

They love them so much they buy big bags of cat food to keep them fat and sassy.


Well, who wouldn't want to see something like this on their deck a couple of times a day? The air rang with their jaunty jake-jake calls.

Note the bit of kibble in mid-gulp on the right-hand bird...


I could have spent days capturing flight images of magpies through the sliding glass doors. Had it not been cold, I'd have loved to open them and sit just inside, the house as my blind.

These birds are one big flash pattern. Pure white primary feathers are rather rare; generally the flight feathers of birds are dark, because melanin strengthens them, and the primaries, being propellers, take the brunt of the wear. They do have a nifty black picotee edge, which I'm sure helps with preventing too much wear. You can see that edging in Photo 2.

The pied coloration of magpies has to do with sending visual signals over vast open terrain, with gathering one's compatriots for raids and mischief. Nothing translates like black and white in these huge, often low-contrast spaces.

Magpies are a gift to the Montana landscape. Though I'm sure our nesting songbirds would disagree (magpies have an appetite for eggs and chicks), a few magpies sure would dress up the meadows of Ohio. Bet they'd love Zick Dough.

A Montana Haven

On our way to Yellowstone, we stopped at the home of friends outside Bozeman, Montana. It was a gray, rainy, cold day, but the birds and animals that flock around John and Durrae's didn't seem to mind. Their yard was a western wonderland for these Ohioans.

Let's just start with the view out the living room window.

and proceed to the lazuli bunting just outside the kitchen window screen.

Ah, but there was more to come. This little Richardson's ground squirrel (everyone in Montana calls them "gophers," even though they aren't...
charmed me with her muzzlepuff cleaning routine.
Kind of a shrinky prairie dog, they are pretty much everywhere in eastern Montana, running across the road, tails straight up in an exclamation point. When I first visited Montana as a 12-year-old, I wept for each one my sister's car hit. I cried a lot those first few days. And then realized that I didn't have tears enough for all the gophers with a death wish.

It was nice to see one close up, to see the sweet animal in what so many perceive as brainless video-game targets. I wish I understood what makes them decide to cross a deserted highway just as your car comes careening through at 75 mph.

There was much more to be enjoyed in John and Durrae's yard...

Prairie Dogs and Mule Deer

One of our favorite spots at Theodore Roosevelt National Park: a place called Buck Hill. It's hard to beat the view from the top.
We feel compelled to photograph each other at the modest summit (There really aren't any mountains in North Dakota).

The kids love to shelter under a ledge and pretend they're hunter/gatherers, looking for dinner, building a fire, flensing skins, perhaps.

Dinner is everywhere--mule deer are plentiful.

It's a great place for wildlife photography. You're largely ignored, and the tableaux are stunning.


The biggest bull bison are often solitary, like this one. Imagine yourself on that winding road, passing from vision to vision. That's TRNP, at dusk in June.

A spotted towhee rasps out its song against the badland backdrop.

We round a corner to find a mother prairie dog and her three exclamation point babies!!!

They wondered why this woman was groaning...

never realizing that they and their tiny hands might be the cause

Three perfect little sod poodles in the slanting light of an endless June evening.