Birds and the Tundra

My ability to photograph birds on the wing is limited. But when they alight (and hold still for a bit) I can do fairly well.It is especially nice to find them on the tundra with all the colors and textures it presents.

Even without a bird in sight, the tundra with the late evening/early morning back light on the flowers makes a glorious sight.

Among the rocks and flowers, we find plovers such as this Black Bellied Plover out watching the sun pretend to go down.

It never really gets dark this time of year. the sun in just over the horizon for an hour or two and then it starts back up again.

This Semipalmated Plover is out by the stream on the rocks taking in the world with the very slowly fading light of this day. Because the sun is making such a glancing angle with the horizon, the motion of the setting sun is nearly parallel to it. Thus, the late evening light lasts a long time... hours.

And so we get these nice warm colors on the rocks and plants. It almost seems like a garden. But we are in a vast plain here with grasses, flowers, and lichens that grow very close to the ground. It extends to the nearby hills and well beyond. In the same way that traveling from South Dakota to Iowa produces no noticeable change in the landscape, so driving across the tundra seems to change nothing. Since the sun sets so slowly, it takes little imagination to feel that you haven't really moved at all.

Just for fun, periodically, a Willow Ptarmigan will appear on the side of the road and pose for us. In the winter they all white and the molt to reddish brown in the summer. The ones we saw were all in transition and showing a little of both states in their feathers.