!5 Dec

Some photos from today:

Bear River

Some pictures from today:

Not from Bear River, but earlier in the day on way home from Antelope Island:

Photo Contest

Bear River Wild Bird Refuge hosts a photo contest for pictures taken at the refuge.  The following were all selected as 3rd place in their respective categories:

Bird Life:

Other Wildlife:

Creative Nature:

Sunset 1 Dec

I had to remind myself to stop running when looking up at the sunset last night. I didn't want to trip and break my finger again.

 This picture was taken about 15 minutes after one of the most spectacular sunsets I have ever seen.  It was still spectacular.

Tracy Aviary

After a wonderful lunch in SLC, we went to Tracy Aviary to see more birds.

Andy the Andean Condor.  He was one big bird!  He started out perched on a log at ground level, then decided to hop/fly to a higher vantage point to check us out.  

Cuckoo

I think this was a saffron warbler:

Baby flamingo:

Some adults:

Scarlet Ibis:

Bear River

It was a day of perseverance.  I wanted to show off Bear River Wild Bird Refuge to Rita and see the swans which have started to arrive in mass.  Only, we couldn't find any.  Saw lots of coots, duck and grebes, as well as some harriers, hawks and even golden eagles.

Pied-bill grebe:

Finally, I found a dirt road that is normally closed and we found where the swans were hiding in a resting area way to the north of the refuge!

Landscapes

 It looks like a recent upgrade to my Nik software now has options for making photos look like vintage cameras.  This could be interesting...

Some Birds

Ducks:

Swans:  Good thing I wasn't in plane, they seemed to be at the altitude that SLC likes for VFR crossing of the Class B airspace.

Eagle:  Winter must be on it's way, the eagles are starting to arrive back.

Close Encounter....

of the moose kind!

I went for a hike and saw these two.  Supposedly there was also a baby somewhere near the mom (or is that the baby and the mom is missing).  The bull was about 2 miles away from them standing on the trail. He wasn't very nice by not letting me get a good picture (he ran off into the brush when he heard me approach).

A few of this plant (not sure what it is, but I like the looks of it in the sun)

This next one is from 16 Oct, I forgot about taking this after my morning training run:

A few more from 50k

This was just as we crossed into the 'off-limits' portion of the island:

Another shot further along the west side of island:

Antelope Island 50k

So, I decided to run a 50k (for those of us who use english distances, that's 31 miles).  The reason:  it went to parts of the west side of Antelope Island that the public is not generally allowed to go visit.  There were some bison and antelope, but not many today.
Since I was running, Mark let me borrow the little point and shoot olympus.  It did it's job and was lighter weight than my Nikon.

Prior to the race:

Elephant Head.  Picture was at about the 7.5 mile mark, looking north.  We had crossed over it at about the 5-6 mile mark then went down into the valley.  I now realize why it's named Elephant Head:

8 shot pano of the valley.  this is the area that is normally off-limits.  It was a 1000' climb from the bottom to the top (pic was taken just shy of the crest):

All-in-all a good day.  Wonderful race and volunteers.  Perfect wx.  I even beat my goal time, despite breaking a finger near the 10 mile mark.

Fall Colors

I haven't figured out if it's going to be a spectacular show or not.  Everything seems muted, but there are patches of bright here and there.

Low Tide

White Rock Bay

Pano from across the bay:

I'll be running around this in two weeks.  Run starts in lower left, goes over the hill on the left, then down and around the valley towards middle of picture and over/around the hills on the far right of the island.  We'll then come back around on the east side of island.

Antelope Island

Spider

This guy was kinda cute (in an odd spider way...)