Hare in the Snow

Photo and video by me - snowshoe hare in the fresh Rocky Mountain National Park snow - discovered while snowshoeing in the park yesterday.

and here's a grainy video of some coyotes playing in the park as well:

Simulacra

Still from Andrey Rublyov

Daphne Wright, Stallion, 2009, Marble dust and resin
160 H x 380 L x 140 W cm

small drawing I did called "After Andrei Rublyov" (obviously)

Town Musicians of Bremen

I ran into the above image online somewhere and it reminded me of Kay Tuttle's series also based on the town musicians of Bremen. It also seemed a bit Lynchian, which of course I enjoyed. Kay said this painting of a swan, fox, and polar bear was her white-on-white:

Kay Tuttle, "Polar Bear, Fox, Swan"; ink on paper, 24” x 30”

Mountain Lion in Oklahoma

This mountain lion was captured on Ryan Ritter’s trail camera near Atoka in southeastern Oklahoma- via Cryptomundo. See also, "Some Mystery Left" - a post I wrote about the mountain lion found in Chicago in 2008.

Photo of the Day

source.

Your moment of cute

My uncle sent me this photo of a recent visitor in his back yard. That thing is cute.

Photo-trap paintings by DMZ

Paintings (yes paintings) by Diego Martinez (DMZ):

In Search of A Lost Icon

I'm currently reading "American Buffalo; In Search of a Lost Icon" by Steven Rinella and it is fascinating. I don't want to give too much away about the book but I would definitely recommend it - it can be enjoyed for the adventurous aspects of the writers life and travels as well as the historical background of the animal and its relationship to man.

While doing some supplemental research on the history of these animals I came across this article at Cryptomundo - "The Wood Bison Discovery Story" -

"The largest land animal in Canada, the wood bison [shown above], had been disappearing from all over North America for centuries when the last animals were officially declared extinct in 1940. Then in 1957, a wonderful discovery occurred. During a regular air patrol, federal wildlife officers flying over a remote part of the Wood Buffalo National Park, Alberta, spotted a small, isolated herd of two hundred wood bison. They had gone completely unnoticed for decades – and had kept physically and genetically separate from their cousins, the plains bison, so familiar to Americans as the buffalo. The wood bison were found about one hundred miles from a new road being built from Alberta to the arctic circle and within fifty miles of a mission station that had existed for a hundred years. Inspection of these animals showed that they were indeed the last remaining pure wood bison (Bison athabascae), an enormous Ice Age species not known to exist in a pure strain anywhere else in the world."

Writer Loren Coleman goes on to say,

"This animal tale is one the late Ivan T. Sanderson and I have both used to demonstrate the simple fact that large animals can remain hidden in North America, quite near humans, relatively speaking." In a way, this goes back to my post called "Some Mystery Left" - written about the mysterious appearance of a mountain lion in the Chicago area.

woods bison
Beautiful photo originally uploaded by rootrider

The world we live in

Here's an excerpt from Alan Prendergast's article in this weeks Westword titled, "In Colorado, it's not about why the wildlife cross the road, but whether they'll survive the trip";

"Establishing safe passages for wildlife is a long-term investment in the state's future, insists Julia Kintsch, an ecologist who operates her own consulting company, ECO-resolutions, and has worked on the Vail Pass bridge project for years. 'There's this hangup that it's for wildlife, not for people,' she says. 'We need to recognize that wildlife are an important part of the world we live in, too. It doesn't always have a monetary value attached to it, but it has value to our economy. It's a large part of why people come here to recreate and to live.'"

More Denver Area Coyotes in the News

On my way to work last Thusday morning I was stopped a light at 7 am in the Tech Center area of Denver/Centennial and I looked off to my right and thought to myself "who's dog is that?" because there was no one near the creature besides three lanes of office workers sipping coffee in their cars. It took me a second to realize that the dog I was looking at on the manicured lawn among Tech Center office buildings was actually a good sized coyote. As soon as the traffic started moving again, the coyote ran out of sight. Coyotes have actually been making a lot of local headlines lately:

Here's a photo of Greenwood Village's own "Limpy" the Coyote - see the campaign to protect "Limpy" and other area coyotes here. Also - this week's Westword has an article about Greenwood Village coyote hazing using paintball guns.

Recent headline on the Glendale Cherry Creek chronicle - article here

April 2009 photo from Aurora, CO - photo by flickr user HopefulNebula

Follow Up: Jaguars in Arizona

I posted on February 26th about a wild Jaguar caught in Arizona named Macho B...well on March 3rd, National Geographic wrote that Macho B had been put down after finding severe kidney failure in the old cat. RIP Macho B.

Camera Trap Photos by J. N. Stuart

Check out his flickr page here.

Elk Sparring

Rocky Mountain National Park was packed yesterday. And traffic was backed up for miles because a few bull elk were sparring in the valley. We managed to get a glimpse of them in action on video. I added the music to cover up all the talking in the original video. It was cool to see this in person, although next year I think we'll go up to RMNP on a weekend that isn't Elkfest.

Goodbye, 20th Century

Patte Loper, "Goodbye, 20th Century"
2006
Animated Video
9 seconds, shown as a loop

This video is based on a scene from a
David Attenborough nature documentary in
which a deer is filmed with infrared
light while walking in a completely dark
cave. The original unpublished video
contains audio of Steve Reich's
Composition for Three Microphones
performed by Sonic Youth .

New Tra Selhtrow Paintings

Unfortunately the gallery website does not have information on these. You can also get prints from Tra Selhtrow at the DUI Studio. I've mentioned his prints before, because they are really exceptional.

The Animal/Botanical Morphs of Amy Ross

Amy Ross, "Cow Birch", Watercolor and Graphite on Paper

Amy Ross, "Goat Magnolia", Watercolor and Graphite on Paper

Amy Ross, "Cow Birch", Watercolor and Graphite on Paper

for related work see: The Bird Girls of Amy Alice Thompson, and Theresa Sapergia "Marksmanship" Drawings

Theresa Sapergia "Marksmanship" Drawings

Theresa Sapergia