Jumping for Voles

I’ve seen a pair of kestrels at Crown Hill Park the last couple of weeks – they hunt right along the backcountry trail and hover just feet in front of me at times.

I brought the dog and the camera (’cause I never see anything there without the dog) to look for kestrels, and of course saw no kestrels, but we did run into coyotes.

This is my favorite little female coyote. She’s fairly calm but rarely lets me get too close, unless I have the dog with me (I think she has a crush on my dog). Unfortunately, my dog is 100+ pounds of muscle and enthusiasm, making photography while strapped to him somewhat difficult.

The weather was getting cloudy and windy, and the coyotes were out hunting before the weather gets too bad. She didn’t mind us following her as she hunted, and I was able to use a tree as a rest for the camera, but while doing that, my dog managed to pin me to the tree with the leash. After taking a few quick shots, she gobbled down her vole and trotted off, and the dog and I tried to figure out how to untangle ourselves.

Coyote (Canis Latrans)
Crown Hill Park, Wheat Ridge, CO
Sony a700
Sony 70-400
Handheld
ISO 400, f/5.6, 400mm, 1/1250sec
Shot in RAW, processed in Lightroom & Nik Software Suite

Belushi Squirrel

Out early to Sloan's Lake to see if I could find John's fox. No luck finding a fox, but I did find geese (as if THAT'S a challenge in Colorado) and a squirrel who was acting, well, squirrelly. He was behaving like a kid in Junior Gymnastics, with a series of clumsy roles and tumbles (think Belushi breaking into the Dean's office in Animal House). As I was getting closer for a better shot, the thought occurred to me that perhaps this wasn't Belushi reincarnated - may he was just rabid. Discretion being the better part of valor, I left him alone.