Coyote Reborn, and some Bugs

In 2006 I completed this 16x20" Coyote painting titled, Golden Light. It was chosen to be displayed for a year in the prestigeous, George Phippen Art Museum in Arizona. Although it was not for sale while it was in the museum show, I hoped that it would generate some interest from art collectors. No one ever contacted me about it.

It sat in storage for years until I put it into the facelift stack. I loved the Coyote itself but the foreground was too heavy handed. Especially the grasses.

The first thing I did was block out everything except the Coyote itself.

Next I re-painted the background using richer, darker colors than the original version. Then I roughed in the Coyote's legs.

Because of the strong contrasts in the composition, I had to make endless minor adjustments, toning down, or brightening up various parts of the painting. At some point I had to decide that it was finished. Now it looks almost nothing like the original version.

The remodel easily took more time than it took to paint it the first time around. I'm considering changing the name. I'm toying with, Lean Mean Coyote Machine. What do you think? Is it too lame?

Yesterday I took a few minutes to photograph some insects in a field near my home. In the above photo, a bumblebee is gathering pollen next to a small fly. I'm grateful that there are almost no houseflies around here. Also no fleas, ticks, cockroaches, or any insect pests except mosquitos.

We have no scorpions, centipedes, crickets, or dangerous spiders. Our butterflies and grasshoppers are few and far between, and very small. We also have very few ants. I do wish that we had cool bugs like walking sticks, and preying mantids.

Most dragonflies are also very small. the one full sized dragonfly is almost black in color.

When you get a close look, you can see more colors.

Some Kingfishers, an Eagle, and More

Today was, and still is, one of the nicest days of the summer. I could not stay indoors. It's easier to get to either Russian Jack Park, or the Coastal Trail, than it is to other natural areas in the vicinity. So those are the places I visit the most. I especially love to note the gradual changes that come with the seasons.

The Coastal Trail has greater wildlife diversity than Russian Jack, so that's where I went today. It's about 5 miles from my home. I saw at least 5 Belted Kingfishers today. They may have all belonged to the same family. Only one posed for photos. It was near the slough where I recently photographed a greenwing and some shorebirds.

I could not get nearly as close to it as I wanted. I did get to watch it hovering, but I was too slow on the draw to get any photos.

A Bald Eagle perched near the kingfisher that posed for me. I could not get close to the eagle either. It was on private property.

I'm pretty sure these dragonflies were 'wrestling'.

There was still a Green-winged Teal in the same little slough where I saw it last time I went there.

This time it was accompanied by it's young. I'm thinking this may actually be another greenwing.

There were four babies in total. There were also two adult female greenwings, but only one stayed close to the babies.

There was only one Greater Yellowlegs in the slough, where there had been about a dozen a week ago. No Lesser Yellowlegs, Least Sandpipers, or dowitchers.

There were still some Short-billed Dowitchers on the island in Westchester Lagoon. They are the larger of the shorebirds in the photo. I can only surmize that the smaller shorebirds are Dunlins.

Three female Greater Scaup joined all their young together, presumably for greater protection from predators, like the eagle. about a third of the babies were underwater at any given time.

The harsh light made it difficult to get pleasing photographs.

You can see by the size differences between some of the babies that they are from different broods.

There were several baby Red-necked Grebes on Westchester Lagoon as well.

There were also spawning Silver, (Coho) Salmon. Only one person was there fishing for them.

A Great Gray Owl and an Old Bear Story

I'll start with the bear story. I'm writing about it now because because I'm bored and too tired to do anything else more ambitious.

Right after I moved to Alaska, two of my Arizona friends, Jody and Richard, came up to visit me in Eagle River. We wanted to do some birding in the area so I called the Rare Bird Hotline to see if there was anything unusual to look for. It reported that a Black-backed Woodpecker nest had been found in Hillside Park in Anchorage. Black-backed Woodpeckers tend to be very difficult to find.

We went to the park and saw a warning sign that a Grizzly Bear had been seen in the park a few days previously. You see signs like this all over the place in the summer months, so I ignored it, thinking the bear had certainly moved on by now.

We walked no more than a hundred yards, (meters) along the main trail when we saw some Varied Thrushes. I was trying to get a good look at them and I heard a huff come from the thick bushes on the opposite side of the trail. I assumed it was a moose, and the thrushes were more interesting to me, so I did'nt even look for the moose.

Jody and Richard were more vigilant and they urgently whispered to me,"Brown Bear". I looked and saw the bear poking it's head out of the bushes only about 25 ft away. Astonishingly the bear walked forward and came right towards us.

We instinctively huddled close together and hurried along the trail as fast as we could walk. The bear followed us, and it occured to me that I had my camera in my knapsack. While we walked I took off the pack and retrieved my camera.

Unfortunately the wide angle lens was on the camera, not the telephoto. I managed three photos, and the photo above is the best of the lot. We met up with five tourists from Oregon, coming up the trail in the opposite direction. We all joined together, and stopped to hold our ground. The bear looked at us like a big puppy that wanted to play. It soon wandered off into the forest.

After all that excitement we still managed to find the Black-backed Woodpecker nest, and a Three-toed Woodpecker nest. I have'nt seen another BB Woodpecker in about a dozen years.

The Great Gray Owl is another old story. During the winter nine or ten years ago I called the local Rare Bird Hotline again. It reported a pair of Great Gray Owls in Earthquake Park in Anchorage. I headed right over there.

It was cold and I searched the area for about two hours, nothing. It was starting to get dark, my face, hands and feet were getting numb, and I had a meeting to get to. As I was leaving the park I ran into another birder that I recognized, so I accompanied him back into the park. In a short time we spotted the bird in the photo above.

I was shooting with slide film in those days, and the owl was at the limits of my camera's flash capacity.

It was truly an impressive sight. A woman about 50 yards away called out that she was looking at the other GG Owl. I thought to myself, "I'm looking at this owl right in front of me, why bother go to look at the other one"?

This remains the only Great Gray Owl that I've seen, and I regret that I did'nt go over to see the other owl.

Anyway, I still had time that evening to get some tacos, and make it to the meeting on time.

The Boar Tide and the Merlin

After nearly a week of rainy days, we finally had some sunshine. I could not pass up the opportunity to head to the beach.

When I arrived, there were actually waves just offshore. They are not ordinary waves, they are a phenomenon called a Boar Tide, (I'm not sure of the spelling). At certain times of the year there are more dynamic tides than usual. When the tide comes in, it creates a strong current that builds waves.

The waves may not look so dramatic, but the current is very dangerous for small boats.

Although the main push of southbound shorebirds is over, there are still plenty of yellowlegs, and dowitchers like the above photo.

These birds are mostly, if not all, Short-billed Dowitchers.

A Greater Yellowlegs on Chester Creek.

A Short-billed Dowitcher, and a Lesser Yellowlegs.

The Short-billed dowitchers will only be around here for another week or so. Most of the migratory birds have already left. Even though it's early August, there was a bit of a chill in the air today. Boo hoo!

Our bumblebees are barely larger than honeybees. This one visits the flowers of a plant called Vetch. It is an invasive plant species.

A glaucous-winged Gull hides amoung Fireweed while a Mallard dozes on Westchester Lagoon. At this point, my camera's batteries died, and my back-up batteries had lost their charge as well.

It's too bad that I had no batteries because I saw a Merlin on the way home. It perched nearby.

I did not take the photo above, or those that follow. Amber, who works at Keller's Photography, shot these photos right next to the parking lot of the studio. Keller's photographs my paintings so I can send high resolution images of them to publishing companies.

The Merlin killed a pigeon nearby and plucked it, and started eating it in the weeds beside the parking lot.

In this photo the Merlin mantles it's kill to keep Amber from stealing it.

Amber graciously put her photos on a cd for me, and gave me permission to use them for reference photos for paintings.

High Country Critters

A while back I went on a hike in the hills around Independence Mine State Park with my friend Brody and his sons. Independence Mine is well above timberline, near Hatcher's Pass above Palmer, Alaska.

I forget the particulars about when the mine closed and what was mined there. Some of the buildings are still in good condition, while others lie in ruins.

I know from experience that this abandoned mine complex is a supreme location for telling ghost stories. We had Brodie's sons trembling with fear even in the daytime. Even I would probably be scared to hear horror stories there at night inside those creaky old buildings.

There are a lot of crumbling structures on the hillsides above the main buildings.

Brodie takes in the view from a vantage above the mine.

We saw this very cute, Collared Pika.

Although I have seen many Pikas over the years, this is the only one I was able to photograph. Pikas do not hibernate. They gather grasses, and other edible plants all summer which they store in rocky crevasses. This is what sustains them through the long winters.

Pikas are about the size of guinea pigs, and have a very loud squeak.

We left the mine behind, and climbed up across the Alpine terrain. These are Brodie's three sons, Ethan, Keaton, and Tate.

Arctic Ground Squirrels are common in the high country. They do hibernate, and put on a great deal of weight in the fall that helps them survive long months underground.

Golden-crowned Sparrows are one of the most common birds found above timberline.

All three ptarmigan species occupy these high slopes. The Rock Ptarmigan above is the most commonly seen species.

I believe that Rock Ptarmigan also occur in alpine areas in Europe. It is my favorite Alaska bird.