Oh give me a home, where the buffalo roam

Classes start on Saturday, so I'm buried in prep. My theme this semester is folk tales and folk songs, so I've found myself walking around singing Flies in the buttermilk, shoo fly shoo and Someone's in the kitchen with Dinah, strummin' on the old banjo. I don't know if kids even sing those songs anymore, but I still remember all the words.

I don't have any pictures of deer handy, but here's a buffalo and an antelope, home, home on the range of Custer State Park in South Dakota.

More bighorns, plus a baby

Unfortunately, the picture of the lamb is blurry, but the cuteness comes through.

More Glacier fauna

We thought that these nosy creatures checking us out through our windshield were mountain goats, but they are actually bighorn sheep.

We never did see a moose, but we probably were able to get a lot closer to these sheep than we ever would to a moose.

And now for something completely different

This chipmunk in Glacier National Park does not get any of the Monty Python references, and clearly isn't impressed by anything I have to say.

Where the deer and the antelope play

It's not all scenery in the park. We saw a big herd of bison, lots of prairie dogs, and several of these pronghorns.

Bunny!

We've had some really annoying and expensive but also kind of hilarious hotel problems the past few two days, so I'm going for pictures that don't require a lot of explanation. I'm too exhausted to explain much, and we're leaving at 6am again tomorrow.

So how about a bunny? Google tells me that this rabbit behind our hotel in Glendive, Montana yesterday morning is probably a desert cottontail.

Wild horses

It was a long drive today and I'm too tired to talk about pictures.

But here are some wild horses in the national park yesterday. I think they speak for themselves.

North Dakota

A bison in Theodore Roosevelt National Park today.

One of my fellow teachers had told me, “North Dakota is prettier than you'd expect,” and that's an understatement. Even in the dreary rain this morning, there was something magical about the highway stretching into the flat forever, with the farms and the yellow canola fields flying by.

And we spent most of the afternoon in the park, where there was abundant wildlife—bison, wild horses, prairie dogs—in a magnificent setting.

Tomorrow we cross Montana heading for Glacier National Park.

This seal is my spirit animal

At least today. I've been very busy but I will resume posting regularly soon.

One more dive

And that's a 10 out of 10 for form, a 7 out of 10 for being too far away and too hard to see against the rocky background.

Before and after

Although I missed the actual dive on this one. They're speedy little buggers.

Sunday bird blogging

I might not have captured any good shots of penguins porpoising, but I did manage to capture this gentoo mid-dive.

Admittedly, a diving penguin is much easier to photograph because they don't just pop up out of nowhere.

Bodyguards

Fun fact: although penguins get much of the water they need from their diet, they can and do drink salt water. They have a gland by their eyes that excretes excess salt from their bodies.

This quartet of penguins (yes, there are four—count the beaks) look like they're standing guard while their friend takes a drink.

Elephant seal aerobics

I so wish I had video of this: an elephant seal in Fortuna Bay actually moving.

The seal had been on the grassy slope above the beach and the process of working its way back down towards the water was only slightly faster and less laborious than my recent climbs up four flights of stairs to my apartment with a bad knee.

The Whew! I'm exhausted reaction upon finally reaching our goals were pretty identical, though.

Elephant seal yoga

In Fortuna Bay. The onlookers were clearly amazed by this display.

The bigger picture

In South Georgia, I took pictures of the animals, I took pictures of the mountains, but I seldom managed to combine the two. This picture from Fortuna Bay has mountains, snow, a glacier, seals, penguins, and a couple of petrels hanging out by the clump of tussac grass.

You want a piece of me?

Not a baby, and a seal that wasn’t interested in appearing cute.

I’m not sure if it was our zodiac that was pissing him or her off, but I like this picture because it’s the only time I’ve seen a seal baring its teeth. During the briefings about maintaining a safe distance from the wildlife, we were warned to be especially careful of seals because they bite. And if anyone was bitten by a seal, the cruise would be over for everyone because we’d have to head back to Chile for medical care.

A seal actually jumped into one of the zodiacs when it was ferrying passengers, and everybody had to huddle as far away from it as possible while the driver returned to the ship. The passengers disembarked and the seal wranglers on the expedition crew persuaded the seal to go back into the water.

A newborn

I'm no seal expert, but this baby, the tiniest one I saw, can't have been more than a couple of days old.

Kids and teenagers

When playing turns to squabbling.

Sunday bird blogging

A gentoo taking a stroll past a seal crash pad in Elsehul Bay.

The colors of the seals' fur coordinates perfectly with the rocks behind them.