Blooming Lewis’s Flax
I wanted to follow my post about a blue bird with blue wildflowers so here are some photos I took last week of Lewis’s Flax which are also known as Wild Blue Flax.
I wanted to follow my post about a blue bird with blue wildflowers so here are some photos I took last week of Lewis’s Flax which are also known as Wild Blue Flax.
Yesterday I wrote about a Golden Eagle in the Wasatch Mountains. Today I am writing about "golden" again. Blooming Mountain Goldenbanner and a Great Blue Heron.
Yesterday I photographed this male American Goldfinch and thought about how he is as bright as the dandelions that are blooming now in the mountains.
On a recent trip to the West Desert sky island mountains in Tooele County I found my lens pointed at trees, shrubs, wildflowers and a butterfly.
I spent my morning up in the Wasatch Mountains yesterday and came home with photos of bluebells, currants, warblers, and a duck.
The first bird I photographed yesterday morning was an immature Cooper's Hawk that I found because I spotted a Red-tailed Hawk on a cliff face that the young accipiter decided to harass.
When I photographed this Common Sunflower I noticed the Great Basin Bumble Bee right away then I saw the other bee and what appears to be two midges on the upper left quadrant of the flower petals.
Once again I missed out on photographing Showy Milkweed at the lower elevations of northern Utah but I made up for it by photographing some of these spectacular pink wildflowers high in the Wasatch Mountains yesterday.
This plant is Black Henbane (Hyoscyamus niger) and is also known as Henbane, Hog’s-bean, and Stinking Nightshade and is native to the Mediterranean.
Female Broad-tailed Hummingbirds do all the nest building, incubating, feeding and rearing of their young while they are here during their breeding season.
What got me so excited was seeing how many serviceberries there were blooming on the slopes of the mountains and how thick the blossoms were on each of the shrubs.
Of the hundred or so images I took of the male Broad-tailed Hummingbirds in that small and very windy area I only liked this one photo.
This female MacGillivray’s Warbler popped into view briefly two years ago high in the Wasatch Mountains and even though she never came out into the open I enjoyed how she was surrounded by the white blooms of a Utah Serviceberry.
In just a matter of days Wax Currants will start to bloom in some of the lower elevations of the mountains that aren't far from where I live and that has me excited.
I enjoyed my journey to photograph the Glacier Lilies yesterday, it was quiet, peaceful and very relaxing. No news, no negativity, and not thinking about what a mess our world is in helped me to de-stress.
For a couple of years now I have enjoyed photographing Cedar Waxwings high up in the Wasatch Mountains from spring through the tail end of autumn.
I photographed this adult White-crowned Sparrow about two weeks ago in northern Utah while it perched on a hackberry tree on a hill with blooming rabbitbrush in the background.
Sometimes the colors of in a photo I have taken are what pleases me and draws me in even if my subject is small in the frame, in this case my subject was an adult White-crowned Sparrow.
I spent 26 minutes yesterday photographing juvenile Red-tailed Hawk siblings and had a blast watching them preen, lift off, flying, scratching, resting and landing.
I researched Utah's grasshoppers and found out that this is a Two-striped Grasshopper (Melanoplus bivittatus) and even though I may have seen this species of grasshopper before it is a photographic lifer for me.
I missed out on photographing Showy Milkweed in bloom in the lower elevations of northern Utah but not at the higher elevations of the Wasatch Mountains.
Yellow Warblers are small birds that look like feathered rays of sunshine that have come to earth and I am always delighted to photograph them
The wild roses, like many of the other wildflowers, don't bloom for long so I am happy that I took the time to photograph individual blossoms and the top of one of the rose bushes this year
Last week I saw several clumps of blooming Mountain Bluebells that were dripping with dew drops from rains that fell overnight and I felt that I had to stop and take photos of them. I know they don't bloom for long.
I truly wish that I had been able to photograph this adult Green-tailed Towhee in this Golden Currant bush while is was in full bloom because that would have been gorgeous with all the tiny yellow flowers.
Like the chokecherries I wrote about yesterday it seems that because of our wetter than normal spring the serviceberries are also doing very well so there should be plentiful fruit for the birds to feast on before they migrate this fall.
Because of our wetter than normal spring it seems that the chokecherries are doing well, extremely well. Many of the chokecherry branches are bending low because of the weight of the blossoms.
Looking beyond the viewfinder paid off for me because if I hadn't done just that I would have missed seeing and photographing this Green-tailed Towhee.
I had more fun photographing Broad-tailed Hummingbirds in the Wasatch Mountains yesterday morning, probably more fun than should be legal.
I spent yesterday morning enjoying a Broad-tailed Hummingbird bliss in the Wasatch Mountains by finding their favorite perches and photographing them feeding, resting, and defending their territories.