One of my favourite winter mountain shots. I love the light, the shape of the mountains and the iron rock jutting out from under the snow. This would be an extreme skiers paradise, but I’m fine with enjoying the view from a distance.
Category: Jasper National Park
I’m not sure why the other photos didn’t appear in the original post but no matter…they are here now! Keeping with the Corvid theme this week, two ravens share a moment together as one gently grooms the feathers of its perspective mate.
After a few minutes of the back grooming the favour was quickly reciprocated with some delicate grooming around the face, beak and neck of the other raven.
The grooming behaviours must have been well done since it was quickly followed up by more intimate behaviours. This is known as billing, and apparently it’s not something ravens do with just any raven! The beaks of birds are very sensitive due to the many nerve endings similar to our own lips, so it isn’t much of a stretch to think that his feels good to them. Things continued to get heated, and not wanting to intrude on their developing relationship anymore than I already had, I quietly packed up and left them to their own devices.
Another photo from the vault. This was a few years ago in Jasper National Park. A goldenrod crab spider, which is an ambush predator, managed to catch a much larger bumble bee when it visited a chive flower to collect nectar. The spider hides under or adjacent to flowers and waits for a pollinating insect to come by. You would think that the bee would be able to fly away in time, but the spider is very quick and has powerful, fast acting venom which is injected into the prey to paralyze it. The spider holds on while the venom takes effect and then devours its meal as is. No web making required.
A rock crumbled away under the foot of this lamb, which for most people would have resulted in them plummeting to the ground. The lamb pivoted it’s weight onto the other feet, regaining it’s balance before jumping down the cliff to rejoin the rest of the herd.
I came across a group of bighorn sheep ewes and lambs next to another rock face. While the ewes were feeding the young lambs played around on the cliff. Apparently a fun game for them was to climb a steep section of the rock and then careen down it as fast as possible! It amazing how quickly they can literally run down a mountain side without injuring or killing themselves.
This group of 11 bighorn rams has one of the most beautiful views in all of Jasper. Rolling grass hills surrounded by mountains in the distance and the turquoise waters in the surrounding lakes. I spent an afternoon photographing these big rams along one of the rocky cliffs adjacent to a lake. By late afternoon the rams made there way down the cliff to get a drink. Always on lookout for any danger, two remained up on the cliff and surveyed the landscape while the rest headed down into the valley.
My favourite photo from my recent trip up to Jasper. During the trip I saw numerous moose, but usually they were hiding amongst the trees which made getting good photos rather difficult. On the last day, I spotted this female along the shores of Medicine Lake at sunrise. The lake was at the lowest I have seen with the deepest part of the lake only a few feet deep. This allowed the moose to get to vegetation at the bottom of the lake that it wouldn’t normally have access to. I spent a few hours photographing this female as she moved along the shore and into the lake. However, it wasn’t until I climbed up and was heading back to my car that I turned around and noticed this great angle and back-lighting. A few cars drove by as I waited for the moose to turned a bit to allow me to get a profile shot. I figured the other people either had seen a lot of moose before and weren’t interested in stopping, or they thought it was just another rock partly submerged in the lake! With that in mind I included the foreground rocks in the photo which I think makes it a much more interesting image.
I took this picture a few months ago from Pyramid Lake in Jasper National Park.
These two black bear cubs climbed up this tree while their mom slept on some of the bigger, stronger branches farther down the tree. By the time they were done they had broken off most of the branches, which fell down and were eaten by their mother who was woken up by a branch hitting her on the head.
I took this photo on my way back to my campsite after photographing black bear cubs and their mom foraging in a meadow. Maligne Lake road is an excellent spot to view wildlife including elk, moose, deer, black bears and wolves.
Owen Slater Photography 