For those of you who know me or my work, this was the original Foxy.  She was one of the best friends I ever had.  I should have been more discreet because she already had a man and quintuplets.  He was a great provider but spent very little time with the family. As for me, I was always a sucker for redheads.  Foxy and Lucy I guess.

Somewhere in the two years after this image was made, Foxy left.  I never knew whether she moved on to fox heaven or just decided that I was not really her type.  Of the females who have spent time in my life, it was only Foxy who inspired me to constantly make photos.  I have made images of a lot of other foxes, and most of those pictures were better than those I made of Foxy, but the memories remain stronger with this tiny female.

Foxy was of course a wild fox and despite the many close-up images I made of her, I never pushed into her comfort zone. I always allowed her to come to me.  At times she would lay down within five feet of me, and fall asleep.  I’ve had a similar effect on other woman.

When I drove into Bong State Park one December, 2006 morning I could not believe my eyes. There were hawks everywhere. I was not sure of the species but I thought they were Rough-legged Hawks.  I knew I had photographed a RLH near Bong in the late 1990s, but that one experience left me unsure of an ID.  They were indeed RLHs and what a sight.  At least 15 of them along the dead-end roadway.  I should not have been surprised because I had once witnessed an explosion of Red-tailed Hawks (maybe 30) and at least 15 Short-eared Owls on another occasion at Bong.   They were hunting the government farmed pheasants along the ditches next to the road.  This went on for three days. The following year I found over thirty (others counted over 40) mixed hawks at Bong.  Rough-legged Hawks, Red-Tails, Cooper’s Hawks, Sharp-shinned, Northern Harriers and a single Northern Goshawk on one morning.  There were also several American Kestrels and at least one Northern Shrike present.  There was once again a lot of pheasants to be found, plus an explosion in the vole population. I have never again witnessed anything like those two winters, either at Bong or anywhere else.

I’ve written about this next experience before, but it shows the value of just wandering in search of interesting wildlife.  It doesn’t hurt that Ron and I were slowly making our way over a remote dirt, Colorado high country road.  Ron saw something move at the side of the road and a quick turn around netted us a nice experience with a North American Badger.  I did fail to switch to shorter a lens and make what should have been great habitat+badger images, but I wouldn’t trade the experience for anything.

I have always found butterfly photography to be challenging. Unlike the carnivorous and territorial dragonflies, butterflies rarely spend much time in one spot.  It is even rarer for them to return to where you found them if you frighten them away.  They are in fact, easy to frighten.  One way to have them to stay in one spot is to find them while they are still wet and/or cold.  Butterflies are however difficult to find when they are under these conditions. I spotted this Monarch one morning in or around 2001, back when I was still shooting film. I had spent about 45 minutes looking for dewy butterflies and by the time I found this one deep in the grasses, my winged friend had warmed and dried enough to fly. Sometimes luck is with you and it was still wet enough that flying a few feet at a time was all that was manageable. On its third or fourth flight it finally landed at a location that was clear enough for a nice shot.

Wild members of the animal world have varying degrees of intelligence and that affects how easy or difficult your photography will be. A highly intelligent animal that wants to evade you, has a lot going for it. Despite that fact, smart animals are often the easiest to photograph. They don’t waste time and energy avoiding humans unless they have a reason.  A fox is as cunning as its reputation and Badgers like all weasels are well up the brain chain.  Hawks are very smart and some  birds like parrots and members of the crow family, rival mammals for intelligence.  That includes the ability to count.  Insects of course have tiny brains.  They operate more on instinct, but they have an amazing ability to detect movement, via visual cues and sometimes vibrations.  Move slow but deliberately with most insects.  Move into position and fine tune your framing and focus by moving (slowly), only what you need to move such as hands, fingers, etc.

Sometimes nature photography is all about persistence. If you never give up you will get the images that you hoped for.

There is nothing quite like being in the presence of a wild animal and sharing a few moments with them.  If possible, with camera. Whether they are easy subjects like Foxy, or difficult like butterflies, the satisfaction you get out of making a “connection” with the animal…..and creating the picture that you had pre- visualized, is like nothing else you will experience.

Guilty Pleasures

Life is better with a guilty pleasure or two to see us through.  Those pleasures are often guilty only because we would be embarrassed to share them with others.

Every Sunday morning between 5:30 am and 7:00 am, Laurel & Hardy Theater appears on my television screen.  As a child L&H were common on Saturday morning television. It is shown today on one of those TV networks that shows old moves and TV shows.  They show everything from their start in talkies in 1928 through the end of their career. It includes both shorts, and feature-length movies.  I have noticed that the early 1930s is the era when most of the pictures they show were made.

My love for L&H was due to the fact that I could always see (even as a child), that through the slapstick and buffoonery, there was intelligence and forethought. Sometimes being an idiot is born of brilliance. These guys were really (especially Laurel) great comedy actors. This Sunday morning they showed the feature-length movie entitled Utopia.  L&H were clearly getting long in the tooth when they made Utopia, as it was made in 1951.  Everything is cyclical and this movie was all about governments and the argument as to whether small or big government was better.  The true conclusion was that there is of course no Utopia.

To shorten the story as best I can, we will say that an island arises from the ocean and our hapless heroes wind up here with three or four others, marooned forever.  They decide to form a government and create a constitution to live by.  A pretty simple one.  No taxes, no government prisons, no laws, in short no rules.  Libertarian? Anyway it worked. Then the world finds out about Utopia and descends on paradise. Chaos and lawlessness prevails. Utopia is on the verge of becoming just like the rest of the world unless our four (or five?) person government does something.  They realize that no people can exist without order in their lives. They make laws.  The rest of the population rebels and sentences our government to death by hanging. The island begins to erupt and is destroyed.  Our once Libertarian but now oppressed government escapes on a raft.  They are picked up and taken to presumably the U.S.  In deciding what to do with our problem government, the decision is to exile them with sanctions. They are dropped on a deserted island and given provisions which will be replenished every six months.  You guessed it, soon others find out about the free ride that is offered on the island and it is soon overrun by the masses.  In the end it is a vicious cycle and as is always the case, Utopia fails.

The film while admitting that Utopia is only a dream, seems to draw the conclusion that when you form a government that is good and unobtrusive, others will take advantage and eventually you will increase the scope of government to avoid a chaotic collapse.  A viscous circle. Ultimately it defends the necessary needs to form a government.  A government that respects liberty and freedom, and is smaller than the people it governs.  It also acknowledges that without rules or laws, there can be no true freedom.  There is no question that everyone who would watch this move would bend it to fit their own view of government.

To me the joy of watching this movie, even with an aging Laurel & Hardy, is the profound thinking of its creators of which I am quite sure Stan Laurel was one.  If this movie would have been made in the early 1930s during The Great Depression, there is no doubt in my mind it would have made big government the good guy.  In the early thirties many good hard-working and patriotic Americans and Europeans even embraced the seduction of communism and the new Soviet Union.  Everyone equal with all having the same rights and wealth. By the time this movie was made the truth was known to be a lie.  There of course was no equality in communism, and everyone (except government officials) shared in the poverty not the wealth.

In the end this is a brilliant old movie that asked big questions and came up with the answer that the truth is somewhere in the middle, and Utopia is just that….Utopia