For the first time in nearly a week, the air quality at my home north of Seattle is merely unhealthy. Smoke from wildfires up and down the west coast has been piling up in the area for well over a week now. At its worst, the layer of smoke was 3,000 feet thick.
I have found it hard to get good action photos of marmots. Most of the time, they aren’t very active.
The hoary marmots I’ve seen in the Cascade mountain range spend most of the year sleeping. They hibernate for 8 to 9 months each year. They are awake only in summer when they scramble to eat enough to sleep through the next three seasons. Even then, however, I often see them stretched out over large rocks, napping in the sunshine.
This post is part of the 5 Minutes in Nature project — quick activities that are designed to help you relax and more deeply appreciate nature, five minutes at a time.
What color is grass? What color are leaves in the summer? What color is a cactus? They’re all green, right? But our snap response causes us to miss some of the nuance that makes nature interesting.
Normally when a photography project takes up a month of my time, I’ve spent many more months planning it. But my July photo project came as a complete surprise.
Comet C/2020 F3 (NEOWISE) put on a spectacular display for most of the month — the brightest comet to be visible in the Northern Hemisphere in more than 13 years. Given its magnificence, you might think there would have been plenty of advance notice. Even though I track comets, I had heard of it only the day before I headed out to photograph it for the first time.
