The End of Columbia River Gorge Photography: Part II

For Part I of this series, click here.

Get ready, because I honestly cannot get enough of these lizards. Lighting's bad on this one.

Better lighting, perhaps, but angle isn't ideal. More of the sunny side, I think.

That's better; now I can see the characteristic blue patch of the western fence lizard, but the best is yet to come. 

The guide told me the name of this plant, but I can't remember. Should have posted sooner. 

Nice view of the Columbia River.

This is my favourite lizard photo of the lot. You can see the yellows really well behind the head and armpit.

A lizard in hand is better than two on the stone. Above are a couple wildflower photos, as if there weren't enough daisy pictures in the world already.

This place, Horsethief Butte, was a popular destination for climbers, but also a great place to catch lizards and contemplate ice age geology.

The view from the top of Horsethief Butte.

More of those flowers that I'm supposed to know the name of.

Industry is everywhere. Chose one: good or bad. Well, kind of both. Though this place was raging rapids in the day of Lewis and Clark, it is now a highway for boats and barges. The energy from the dam powers the whole town adjacent.

Here's another good shot. This one must be a sagebrush lizard. 

Look how the blue spots show up so well! Of course, I did saturate this photo a little from the original.

This photo is pure fraud. Just thought it looked pretty all doctored up to bring out the pinks. Looks kind of like one of those old paintings of prehistoric times; purple sky, blue volcano, and- Hey! Where's the T-rex?

This picture is more true to the original colour of the sunset. Of course, it is impossible to replicate the vivid beauty that the human eye can produce from such light.

In the morning, I found a common garter snake near the campground, probably the valley garter snake subspecies.

Extremely placid little fellow. I gave him a kiss on the lips. That's why his cheeks are blushing red. 

If you enjoyed these photos, stay tuned for Part III!

May 10, 2013 Part 1

Columbia River Gorge, Day 2A:

Only her bulging eyes
hint at the pain this
snake feels after
being hit by a car.

The California Mountain Kingsnake. The only one I've
ever found. It's a shame it will almost certainly be dead
shortly.

Fence lizard on a fence. Living up
to his name.

This morning we left camp early to go searching for reptiles at Catherine Creek, on the Washington side of the gorge. On the way there, my Dad spotted a snake on the road, so we pulled over and a couple of us ran back to see what if Dad's guess of California mountain kingsnake was right. It was but, sadly, the reptile had already been hit by a car and was close to death. Externally, she appeared fine but the only movements she could make were slow writhing shoves of her coils. I gently moved her off the road, but I doubted she would live another hour. She was probably the most beautiful snake I'd seen up to that point, and its sad that it had to be a roadkill specimen.

Fence lizard on rock, not living up to
his name.

Do you think she's pregnant? This
ground squirrel's teats were swollen.

Driving on from there to the trailhead parking lot, we pulled out our "snake sticks" and trekked out poking our improvised paint rollers into holes and under logs. Soon, we were catching southern alligator lizards and fence lizards around the creek's edge.
We stopped for lunch at a large pile of timber and watched a large male fence lizard do pushups on the highest plank to impress his females. It was pretty impressive. A ground squirrel soon showed up on the stack as well. It almost seemed like she was trying to stalk the lizards. She would have taken food from us I think if we had given her any. Daniel, my brother, tried catching the male fence lizard but he was outwitted.
I was beginning to think we wouldn't see any living snakes today but, thankfully, that proved to be wrong. My brother, moving ahead while we finished lunch, soon made up for his humiliating experience with the fence lizard. Calling, he alerted us to a gopher snake that was crossing the path. Gopher snakes are a species that one really cannot get enough of. They have beautiful faces and beautiful personalities, and are extremely photogenic. I took plenty of pictures and handled it a little, but it seemed to be fairly aggressive for a gopher snake. It mustn't have liked my camera.

Isn't that the most beautiful face you've ever seen? I'm not sure what subspecies of gopher snake these are. They might even be hybrids between the pacific and great basin subspecies.

He's saying, "I'll bite you if you come any closer!" Of course, it's just a bluff. I picked him up and he didn't follow through.

Only a short ways further I caught a second gopher snake and this one was really cranky. Striking at my lens and lunging at the family when they got too close. It is amazing how each snake has it's own personality. They certainly aren't programmed robots. They are individuals with their own likes and dislikes. Though I was hoping for a more complacent individual, it's nice to see some good, old-fashioned fear of people in these two snakes.

Lupines in a pine grove.

This gopher snake was pretty cranky.

Can anyone tell me what kind of
wildflower this is?

More lupines.

The trail led us into a beautiful grove of deciduous trees and a variety of wildflowers sprang up from the grasses. It was a beautiful place and I employed my camera on the purples of the wildflowers. And nearly all of them were a shade of purple! I photographed lupines, paintbrush, blue-eyed grass (I think) and other species that I couldn't identify. One of the flowers had a pretty little flower longhorn beetle on it. While the young of this species bore into trees and feed on the wood, the adults enjoy feeding on the pollen and nectar of flowers.

This is a flower longhorn beetle on an
unidentified wildflower.

This must be an alpine paintbrush.

Mount Hood stands out behind the
Columbia River Gorge.

After some time of beating around in the lush forests in the Catherine Creek valley, the trail carried us out onto a bare hill for a better look at the at the Columbia River Gorge. It was amazing to think that, as we stood there in the blistering heat of the hill with only a few scant and withered pines around us, that we had just come out of a relatively lush forest. Looking toward Mount Hood and its frozen Eliot Glacier my eyes drifted down into the temperate rainforest that surounds the mountain and finally to the rocky basalt shores of the Columbia River. So much diversity in such a short span of distance.

Florescent lichen.

There was a beautiful piece of lichen on an old sun-dried pine log on the hill and, though I tried, I couldn't seem to capture exactly how brilliantly florescent it was with my camera.

A tiny taste of things to come.

The trail led us back into the valley shortly and I took a few more wildflower pictures and practiced using slow shutter speeds with my camera on water. The mossy rock amid the foaming stream made a nice shot, but scarcely compares to our next destination today.
Because of formatting issues with my new blog design, this post has been split into two new posts this one, and Day 2B, here.

Return to Blackwater River State Park

Here is the sort of cypress swamp that I was wading through earlier this spring. Only the weather wasn't as nice.

It takes a sharp eye to make out a turtle hatchling like this,
so far from the water. Not expected. Very surprising. Even
more surprising that I spotted it at all.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my favourite spots at West Campus, my usual weekend destination, was destroyed by a mob of excavators and bobcats. Thus, I started making regular trips out to Blackwater River State Park. When I got back to the park this second time, the weather was perfect. Insects buzzed and people played; birds bounced around the branches of magnolia and pine. After a long hike, we even cooled off in the river a little bit (though it was still quite cold). Sliders of all sizes were out basking on logs and a menagerie of other cold-blooded creatures where spotted and captured. Here are a few of the highlights.
When stalking through the forests, it often takes me a few minutes to "tune in," if you will. I'm usually not at optimum levels until after at least an hour. Then I start seeing things that I would normally never have noticed. A leaf moves on the ground on a windy day and turning it reveals a ground skink. The rustling grass at my feat rustles in a way that disturbs the music and I know someone else is down there. A rodent or snake, perhaps. It's almost sixth-sensish. My peripheral vision becomes exceptionally clear as well. On this hike, my eyes scan back and forth across the cypress swamp, focussing in on logs, stumps or any other protrusion from the waters surface. Ripples reveal a fish turning just under the surface. A soft point reveals the nose of slider spying on me from the rushes. As my field of vision moves toward a slanted trunk, my eyes clamp onto a small lump a couple feet from the water. It's too far away for my eyes to decide exactly what it is, but the lens of my camera does better. It's a juvenile cooter.
Meanwhile, my friend Dakota has begun his own visual search of the pond. He said something, but I was clicking away on my shudder and missed it. Then I caught a key word: snake. "Water snake," he said. I'd never caught one of those (though I've come awful close) and wanted to really bad. My heart skipped a beat as I aimed my zoom lens at the bush he was pointing at. "That's not a water snake," I said, just a little disappointed, "I think it's a cottonmouth." It was after all. That being the case, I wouldn't going to disturb his quiet ambush position over the pond. I've caught lots of cottonmouths before.

This young cottonmouth snake is hiding in a snag above a pond. I'd nickname Dakota "Eagle-eyes" if the title didn't belong to someone else I hunt snakes with already. It's a wonder he spied it. Even after he pointed it out to me I could hardly make it out.

Here is the fence lizard before I tried
catching her. Gorgeous, eh?

Notice the pale blue spot on the
throat characteristic of this genera.

Besides cotton mouths and cooters, Dakota also spotted a fence lizard. From his initial call, it took quite time before I caught the little rascal. My brother and I were crawling and scrambling up and down the river bank grabbing at the frightened little lizard. When I finally had it in hand, both of our hearts were racing. I took as many pictures as I liked to and passed it to some of my friends so they could feel her little beating heart. People find it easier to love something that they can touch and hold. She was released into the shade of the tree that I had caught her under. Always release an animal right where you found it.
I enjoy breaking from the main group and poking around an area alone for a while. In one of my frequent diversions, I spotted a large frog under the board walk. He was sitting in the shade on the bank in a shallow depression. He seemed aware of my presence but had a secret hope that I hadn't noticed him. I approached carefully and was able to successfully swing my net overtop of the ranid and pull him into the open. Once in hand, I called the others over and had my friend Jonathan take some photos of me with my catch. At the time I thought it must be a bullfrog but, after getting back to my dorm room I decided it must be a river frog instead. The mottled groin (area just in front of the leg on the side of a frog) seemed characteristic.