Fall is coming to Montana

 It's been hot and dry in my state. Fires are burning millions of acres of timber land. It will take a hundred years or more for the land to recover and for us to have forests like we had. The beetles killed miles of trees, now they're standing dry fuel for fire. Loggers are not allowed in our forests to clean and preserve them. It's a sad state of affairs. Our entire state has poor quality air from the burns.

The burrowing owls have grown up and left for parts unknown. I wish I knew where they migrated to. They were so entertaining...I'm hoping they come back next year so we can watch them some more.

Bears are roaming the woods filling their bellies for a long winter sleep. This one was near Gibson Dam, in a tree that hung heavy with choke cherries.

I hope it's peaceful where you are, no fires, no floods, just normal life happening....
Donna

Texas Longhorns in Montana

 There's a small herd of longhorns about five miles southeast of where we live. They're beautiful cattle with a rich history in the American West. This photo showcases a longhorn bull and a couple of the cattle he lives with. I added layers of texture to the background to bring the cattle into strong focus.

 This is the same bull from the photo above. He was laying down, but got up to stretch. It was such a big long stretch! He enjoyed every second of it.

 This cow has a deformed horn which could have been caused by an injury or by a stretch of very cold weather. When we moved to Vaughn in 2004, this cow was probably young. We took photos of her way back then. She's still alive and well...

 We're inundated with smoke from all the forest fires in Montana and Canada. The smoke in the atmosphere gives our landscape a strange, alien feeling.

 These two photos were of landscapes south and east of Ulm, Montana.

I liked this antelope all alone out on the prairie. Behind him, you see a part of the famous Square Butte that was in many of Charlie Russells paintings.

Montana Photos Today

As I was driving along a country road, I spotted tracks in the snow along side the road, then I saw a gopher plowing through snow and he disappeared. I stopped the car, got out with the camera and walked along to where his trail disappeared into the snow.

I stood there facing a canal bank wondering if the gopher would come out, so I gave a sharp whistle. I waited and he returned my whistle! I thought give him a few seconds and he'll pop his head out of the snow and I'd better be ready. Sure enough, out he came, and I clicked the shutter.

I thought he was really cute, peeking out of the snow like that, looking me right in the eye.

A little further down the road, this horse was sound asleep in the bright sunshine. He doesn't even know we're looking at him right now.

This horse was far from asleep, he was standing at attention!

This holstein steer had a bad dehorn job at some time in his life.  Sometimes a horn grows weird like this when dehorning paste is used, or when the person running the dehorn tool doesn't get a deep enough grab on the young horns. The lopsided horn gave him rakish look.

I have a hard time catching pheasants with my camera, today I got lucky. He didn't run before I got the photo!

Hope you enjoyed this little group of pictures from my travels today!

Donna