Wildlife day in Madera Canyon

So my sweetie and I are hiking in Madera Canyon, heading for my favorite little waterfall off a stream that was mostly dry today.  As I came upon some water flowing, I was excited to see it and there was a small waterfall just above that that I was excited about.  As I climbed over some rocks to the stream bed above the small waterfall, I was about 50 feet ahead of my sweetie.  I did a double take when I saw two furry forms ahead - a larger black bear and a smaller brown bear - mom and cub, I assumed.  They were probably about 40 feet away.  I backed away rather quickly and as I started down the rocks next to the small waterfall, I started calling out to Karri - "go back, quickly!" - I wanted her to get some more distance between her and the bears in case they decided to be aggressive. All she could say as I stood there was "Why?"  I looked back and the bears were moving off to the side of the stream and uphill.  All this time, I had 4 cameras, my 20D with my 75-300mm telephoto in place and my sx260 on my hip, an older P&S in my bag and of course my smartphone and instead of pulling any of them out, I was working on getting some distance between me and the bears!  So I missed the best picture, but now as they were slowly moving uphill, they were showing no signs of threatening us, so I pulled out my 20D and snapped a couple shots - none that great, but here's the best of the 4 pictures I took with the 75-300mm lens at 180mm focal length and an exposure of 1/80 seconds at f/8, ISO 100:

Later, on the way back to the trailhead, this deer crossed the trail ahead of me and went down by the stream.  We slowly made our way down the trail and the deer at first did not hear or see us coming and then continued feeding on the grass next to the stream as he kept an eye on us.  This next image was taken with my 20D with my 75-300mm lens at 135mm focal length with an exposure of 1/100 seconds at f/4.5, ISO 400.

We also saw the usual supply of lizards - this image was taken with my SX260HS with an exposure of 1/2000 seconds at f/8, ISO 1600.

As we were leaving Madera Canyon we passed a flock of Turkeys with this guy showing off his plumage for the camera.

Here's the rest of the turkeys.

The view from Dead Indian Summit Overlook

The view from Dead Indian Summit Overlook on Friday July 27 was quite spectacular as the view westward generally towards Yellowstone National Park show the steep mountain road on the right-center foreground and valleys and mountain ranges as we stopped here along the road between Cody Wyoming and the Northeast Entrance to the park.  Along the way, the road is steep and winding before entering the valley generally to the right third of this image and heading towards Montana to the Northwest of here.  You can even see some snow on the peaks just left of center on the horizon.  This 8 frame panorama taken with my 24mm lens and exposures of 1/500 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 100 and was assembled with the Hugin Panorama Creator under Linux.

While at the overlook, quite a large crew of Chipmunks and Squirrels were there and not only entertaining fellow travelers, but happy to accept a small gratuity (of food, of course) from them.  This little guy didn't want to miss out on the activities as he climbed over rocks to get to the crowd of critters and humans.  This image was taken with my 75-300mm lens at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/800 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 100.

This picture is a 2nd squirrel munching a potato chip given to him by one of the other tourists.  Both these guys were around 5 inches long (head and body less the tail) and I suspect they are Sierra Nevada Golden-Mantled Ground Squirrels. This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/800 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 100.

I didn't get a very good shot of the little guy below.  He's got the pointier snout of a chipmunk along with the markings on his head and he was a little smaller than the other critters.  This shot was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/1000 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 100.

New Neighbors

After a day of driving, we pulled into our campsite at Craters of the Moon National Monument.  This little guy was checking out his new neighbors from the adjacent lava fields.  He made quite a racket with his chirping - almost  sounded like a bird when I first heard him rather than the squirrel he was.  This image was taken with my 75-300mm lens at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/125 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 100.

Dear Deers

After a few moments, the deer and her friend decided they'd have enough of this deer watcher and ran across the hillside.

Dear Deer

On the way up the windy mountain road to Kitt Peak, I surprised this deer who was in the road when I first saw her. She ran up the side of the hill a ways and stopped, so I pulled over and took her picture using my Canon A570is.

Gone Batty

This little guy was hanging out (quite literally) just outside the entrance to the school in Pinon AZ where my wife was leading a workshop. It was a cool, dim area for him to spend the day. He was still there 7 hours later when we left. This image was taken at 300mm focal length with an exposure of 1/60 seconds at f/5.6, ISO 400.