Spring: A Month of Photographs!

Phenology: the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life.

Today marks the one month celebration of the Yellowstone Phenology Project! According to analytics, The Green Man has seen much more traffic this month than ever before, and I want to thank all of you for making that happen. Please continue to share these links on FB and other social media, and please subscribe to this blog using the email box on the sidebar!

To celebrate the success of this project, here are some video highlights from this month. Enjoy!

It has been a fun challenge to produce diverse and interesting photographs that represent the fast-paced seasonal change here in the Northern Rockies. Today I wanted to recap the amazing month that we've had here. Snow has melted off in the valleys and mid-elevations. fledglings, pups, calves, and fawns are being welcomed into the world by healthy, happy parents. The landscape has changed from a dull brown to a thousand neon greens. People are seeing their neighbors again. Everything smells like charcoal grills and sweet cottonwoods. Everything is coated in pollen, and our most colorful spring migrants have arrived. These are the weeks that everyone here lives for.

Change happens quickly yet can be hard to notice on a day-to-day basis, so lets see how things have progressed from May 9 to June 9. Thanks again everyone, and keep watching!

The Yellowstone Phenology Project: 5-9 Grizzly Fishing

Phenology: the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, 

especially in relation to climate and plant and animal life.

I'm going to try something here. I want to post a photo or video every day through the spring, summer, and fall. Frank C. Craighead Jr's book "A Naturalist Guide to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks" is an amazing resource that walks us chronologically through the seasons, pointing out what animals are present in the valley, what they are eating, what plants are flowering, and how all of the cogs in the ecosystem clock are turning each week. I thought it would be fun to capture, photographically, this annual march through time. Change is the only constant around here. Like Ferris Bueller famously said, "life moves pretty fast. If you don't look up once in a while, you might miss it." Six months from now, I hope to be able to use this little project like a flipbook to watch the seasons unfold and meld chronologically. Here we go,we'll start with a bang.

This young male grizzly has recently emerged from his first solo hibernation without mom (the famous Grizzly 610). He walks the shore, looking for dead cutthroat trout and mountain whitefish that have been frozen, preserved, in ice all winter long.

    and a bonus video to kick things off!