Even at this point in my life I still manage a few “firsts”.  I experience very few photographic firsts but I still manage some nature firsts.  Over the years I have twice spotted Bobcats in the Badlands of South Dakota.  They were at dusk and they were too quick for me so there were no pictures born from the experiences.  Once each in the American Legion State Forest of northeastern Wisconsin, and in the Southern Kettle Morraine State Forest of south central Wisconsin I experienced the exact same circumstances.  The one place I have always been pretty sure I would not see a Bobcat was in the southeastern Wisconsin, northeastern Illinois corridor where I currently live.  This is just not where you find things like Bobcats or wolves.  Coyotes are everywhere and our population of Red (and Gray) Fox is huge, but this is just not Bobcat country.  That changed for me a week ago.  I was quietly riding with my sister through a state park at 10:00 a.m. when we rounded a bend in a wooded area only to find a Bobcat in the middle of the road.  Our view was somewhat fleeting but long enough to be sure of what we saw.   I believe that a lot of wildlife is actually expanding their range.  As we develop the more remote areas one place becomes pretty much like another, so they move into areas that have been populated for a long time.  Good for people like me but not usually good for the wildlife.  Most people in urban or semi urban areas do not understand the ways of wildlife and in the end, the animals will always pay the price for ignorance.

I did not have camera equipment with me when we spotted the Bobcat.  It was a bit too fast for a usable picture anyway but in the 1980s I decided to not even carry equipment when I am with non-photographers.  Now my sister would have been just fine with me having equipment along and so would have many others through the years. My decision came when I realized that I was too polite to put non-photographers through my obsession with getting the picture.  Over and over again.  Even when they are very nice about stopping I can feel their eyes on the back of my neck.  It came to mean that over the past twenty-five years everywhere I go is either with photographers or alone.  I mean even a short drive in the country near home.  These are hard decisions to make but there is a time when you have to decide how serious you are about your photography.

The act of “not being”  a photographer is very difficult for me.  I know I occasionally make and share pictures but to me, shooting only around home a couple of times a month, for no professional reason does not qualify as “being” a photographer.   It is just as hard for me to not teach workshops.  I truly have been in love with teaching nature photography for twenty years.  Over the past couple years physical ailments affected my teaching.  Sometimes I was good and sometimes I was not and I just can’t tolerate the latter.  I occasionally have to fight feeling sorry for myself when I see great (healthy) nature photographers who would rather do a thousand other things than create nature images.  Then there are workshop teachers who are lucky to be kept busy with that endeavor when the truth is they have no real love for it.  It is just for the money.  Then I realize the sheer joy that I experienced when was doing these things and I know just how fortunate I was.  Everything has a purpose.

Google + is still in limited use but a few words from Moose Peterson leads one to believe that it may be superior to Facebook.  Better security features and more people who are on target with their reasons for being there.  In other words there would be less small talk and more people who stay on theme.   There has always been a degree of discomfort for me on Facebook and it has caused me to all but suspend my activities there.  Of course I have been hacked twice, and often find political ads in the midst of legitimate posts on my own home page.  Because of that I may be slightly biased.

As is often the case, today’s pictures have absolutley nothing to do with my writings.

Young Pied-billed Grebe

Lupine Leaf & Dew