So I thought you might want to see what one of our photography trips looks like. Here are all the still images we took turned in to a short video. Oh and there is a brief section of “real” video embedded as well.

This clip is from Rocky Mountain National Park Elk rut in October of this year. This is again one of those things that you just cannot understand if you haven’t seen and heard it. I don’t know if other species exhibit this strange behavior but it is certainly unusual.

The bulls acquire a harem of cows numbering around 20 by growing huge racks of horns, rolling in mud to look bigger and giving off the piercing screech they are famous for. Actually the cows choose the bull with whom they mate once and then leave. They spend the winter and spring with other expecting cows for protection.

These videos were taken just before and after dawn so the light is not ideal but you can get a flavor of the antics of the bulls during the rut anyway.

The primordial sight of tens of thousands of Snow Geese launching at dawn over the marshes of Bosque del Apache is a life experience. These short movie clips cannot begin to do it justice. Being there and seeing this daily event during the migratory season touches everyone somewhere very deep in their soul.

The three clips are from three different mornings. The display is different each time and makes one want to keep coming back for more. I met one gentleman who had visited Bosque every year for the past 30 years. In the first clip all is relatively quite and then all the geese launch at once and are gone in a few seconds. In the second clip the Snow Geese aborted the launch, came back to the marshes and then launched again. In the third clip the geese depart in a more orderly fashion.