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In Gulf Shores, Alabama, I was shooting photos of probably my favorite sea bird, the yellow-headed brown pelican, when I came upon a gathering of dozens of resting birds. Upon scanning the group, an odd member caught my eye and I snapped this photo. Evidently, as long as a visitor is cordial, the pelicans won't chase him off.
The brown pelican species can be found on nearly every mile of coastline between northern South America to Canada, on both coasts and the Gulf of Mexico. It has one of the largest wingspans as well, at 6.5' to 7.5'. But my favorite description was something my dad used to say, which I later found out was from a poem by Ogden Nash: "A wonderful bird is the pelican, His bill will hold more than his belican" (though my dad's version used the term "beak" rather than "bill"). 
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Elk are sometimes plentiful in the Rocky Mountains, and most are used to having gawking humans around. This bull elk, however, boisterously voiced his displeasure when we stopped our hike to take a couple of photos. We weren't as close as it appears using my zoom lens, but evidently close enough to bother the disagreeable one, who yelled like he was late for supper.
Nearly all the elk in the park are descendants of an original 49 elk transplanted from Yellowstone National Park in 1913 and 1914. This was done because the Rocky Mountain elk were thoroughly hunted, with almost none left by 1890. Now there are as many at 3,200 elk are scattered throughout the National Park during the summer and fall months, with nearly 800 elk spending winter there. 
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Throughout my years taking photos, few subjects fascinate me more than the sight of nature reclaiming abandoned buildings, sometimes aggressively. This particular shed was found on one of my Central Texas drives over the summer, this time in the rural area between Quihi and Rio Medina, in Medina County. The green was almost overwhelming.
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These "painted" rocks on the cliff of the Sierra Madre Range in Southern Wyoming are actually colored by lichen. The outcropping itself, with its crags and fractures, has photogenic qualities, but the greens and oranges of the algae-like growth makes it one of my favorite cliff shots. The trees and meadow in the distance give depth and perspective, showing how the rock face overlooks the canyon.
The Sierra Madre Range is actually a section of the Colorado Rocky Mountains just north of the Wyoming border and includes the Continental Divide. This photo was taken just a couple of miles from Colorado. 
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I have taken over a thousand photos of sunsets, so it takes a great deal to make one stand out for me. This particular shot, taken from the Arthur R. Marshall Loxahatchee National Wildlife Refuge in Southern Florida, has many unusual features. The beautiful shade of red-orange, the full sun that had appeared from behind a cloud bank just before reaching the horizon of sparse trees and shrubs and the flock of birds that were heading for their nesting area, all made this photo rather unique.
The Arthur R. Marshall Refuge is over 145,000 acres of northern Everglades and cypress swamp, protecting the integrity of the Everglades ecosystem. Marshall was a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service employee and noted South Florida conservationist. If you ever get the chance to see this extensive ecosystem, it's worth spending a few days exploring there. 
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The third lighthouse in this collection, the Mulholland Point Lighthouse is across a narrows and bay entrance from Lubec, Maine. There are almost 200 lighthouses scattered along the Eastern seaboard, and this one struck me as especially photogenic.
Lubec is on the far eastern tip of Maine, on the way to Campobello International Park on a Canadian island. The Mulholland Point Lighthouse, which actually sits in New Brunswick, Canada, was built in 1888 to guide small ships and freighters traveling into Cobscook and Passamaquoddy Bays through the Lubec Narrows. Now decommissioned, it is a wooden-framed tower 44 feet high with a diameter of 22 feet at its base. 
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Arches National Park near Moab, Utah, is a wonder of nature and an ideal location for a photographer to become overloaded with iconic scenes. I have many shots of impressive arches and striking spires from around the park, but sometimes seeing them from a bit farther away gives you a compelling perspective. On the trail to Delicate Arch is such a view, a distant line of arches, mounds, spires and monoliths, If you look closely, you can see tourists among them who have made the trek, unknowingly giving the structures scale.
Once a giant seabed, the area buckled and lifted over tens of millions of years, exposing the sandstone and subjecting them to the forces of erosion and the seasons. Over time, winter and spring have frozen and thawed the exposed rock and caused fractures, allowing even more water into the structures, further aiding the process. Eventually, sandstone cliffs and rock layers became fins, and fins became the arches and monoliths that we see today. This process is still underway, with an occasional loss of an arch to these forces over the years. 
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This photo is a bit of a sentimental selection, since it was among the very first digital photographs I have ever taken. Way back in 2001, my wife gave me a new, high-tech digital camera that had a whopping 300 pixels per inch of resolution (that's 0.3 mp) and stored them with a built-in floppy drive. I recently found this winery's website and the entrance still appears to be just the way I shot it.
We were fortunate to live within a couple hour's drive of the Finger Lakes region of New York State, and we visited the wineries there a few times a year. One of the aspects of this shot I enjoyed was the mirrored curve of the foyer's rafters, both framing the heron silhouette. The low resolution means I'll never be able to blow this picture up to poster-size, but I think the composition makes this a good choice for the weekly selection. 
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Snuggled into California's Pinnacles National Park, we found a wildflower, the "Pretty Face" lily, that can be very striking when one comes upon it. With dark-stripes on its petals and buds contrasting the yellow bloom, the flower itself provides a respite from its green grassy surroundings. I especially liked this shot because of the neon blue blossoms in the background.
The Pretty Face, or Triteleia ixioides, also known as golden stars, starlight and triplet lily, can be found mainly in Central and Northern California, and sometimes in Southern Oregon, in forests at the lower elevations of the coastal regions as well as the sub-alpine zones of the Sierra Nevadas, up to 9’000 feet. 
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This is not the first Acorn Woodpecker to be chosen for this collection, but they have so much personality that it's difficult to keep from selecting them. This male visited our Central California wine country campsite quite often and, along with a comical scrub jay, provided an abundance of entertainment. Most often seen on nearby tree trunks, when he sat in shrubs, he contrasted nicely with the green background.
Male acorn woodpeckers have larger red caps than females and are often polygamous. They are also know to inhabit areas close to their original nest for years. 
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AuthorJack Huber has taken tens of thousands of photographs around the country and in his foreign travels. Archives
November 2021
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