Tag Archives: bison

Oranges

December 1st, 2008 | By Judy Wood





December 1st and still nice enough weather to do outdoor photos without a lot of stress. My daughter Jennifer has been visiting here for the past few days (from the area near Nelson, British Columbia, where she lives), and we have been doing the odd outing here and there when our schedules coincide, and when I’m not in the midst of an on-going studio sale as I was for the weekend.

Speaking of the studio sale, I can’t figure out how to actually get a reasonable number of people to come to these events. The ones who do make it through my doors are generally pretty keen on what they are viewing, and I have to describe them as “quality” customers. I just need to figure out how to add “quantity” into the mix and I’ll be good to go. Guess part of it is the time of year. There are just too many weekend events once we get into the Christmas zone, and everyone has to make decisions on what they can and cannot attend. It’s just kind of discouraging when all the people who are keen to know when my show and sale will be don’t actually ever show up for it. Sigh.

On the other hand, this means I still have lots of stock for the next go-round, which will be coming up next weekend ( Dec. 7-8-9) when I will be at the Sundog Arts and Crafts Fair at Credit Union Centre in Saskatoon (booth 115 on the main/upstairs concourse level). Of course I still think of this location as Sask Place which it was for many years. I don’t know if it’s just a Saskatoon thing, but names of “landmark” type buildings in this city change at the drop of a hat. Most of us who have always been around don’t remember the new names and refer to whatever area we are talking about as “it used to be called…” or “it used to be located….”. Directions to strangers can be totally confusing when locals say “to get to what used to be such and such a building, go past the corner where so and so used to be, etc….” Can’t be easy to find your way around when none of us has a scorecard that is current. However, there’s not much incentive to work at learning the new designation, as by the time you have internalized that information it will have changed again anyway.

Now that I’ve mentioned yet again the unseasonable niceness of the weather, I think the change may be about to happen. My studio (where I compose these blogs entries) is up on top of the house and I can hear a sudden and fairly dramatic sounding wind blowing out there. We are supposed to be getting a big temperature drop overnight, and I think this might be the beginning of it. I bought some nice cosy new winter boots (good to thirty-five below, which they could well see in the upcoming months), have my snow tires on the car, and a decent blanket on the horse, so I guess I’m as prepared as I can be for the moment. Jim announced last night that last year at the end of November it was minus twenty-five here, so the plus five we had today seems like (and is!) a bonus for early December.

Today’s photos are from a trip to the zoo that three generations of my family made this morning, all with our cameras in hand. Grandson Mark had the day off school so he was with me for the day, and Jen joined us as she was interested in getting some shots of the white tigers and the newly acquired grizzlies at the zoo. Of course neither of these species was actually to be seen, being “off exhibit” for the season, but we still had a nice wander around the park-like grounds, and got to do some photos of the native species still in their habitats.

Shot one is of a tender little bison calf which seemed to be somewhat stunned by life in general. I knew something was striking me as odd about the whole scenario there, but it wasn’t until I downloaded the photos and realized that it still had an umbilical cord attached to it that the penny dropped. This is a very recently-born calf. In December. There’s something wrong with that concept, although in the sheltered zoo environment it will do just fine. Just seems like a bit of a miscalculation on nature’s part that it could happen at all.

Shot two shows Jennifer focussing on a little herd of antelope. She has the camera bug, as does grandson Mark (her nephew) and it gives me great pleasure to see the mania for image gathering carry on to two more generations. I like to think it’s all my fault.

Shot three is a wasp’s nest, or what is left of the interior, that Mark discovered on the grass at the zoo. I was fascinated by the patterns and stripes.

When I pulled today’s shots for this blog and got them all together, I realized there was a strong “orange” theme running through most of the images. This color theme continues in the last two shots, which are of some wonderful berries I spotted on a tree as we were leaving the zoo, followed by the sunset of this evening, taken from my front yard. If I’d suspected we would have such a colorful sunset I would have tried to get out into the country for more open space and a bigger view of the sky, but (as is sadly often the case) by the time I realized that the otherwise very grey day was going down in clouds of glory, it was too late for me to get to a location that is free of trees and neighbouring houses, so this was the best I could do.

©Copyright 2008 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Judy Wood’s website.

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Not exactly to plan

November 10th, 2008 | By Judy Wood





Well, just as pride goeth before a fall, so apparently does optimism go before a really dismal show. Just when I was hopeful for this past week’s show/sale in Edmonton on the basis of my artist friends assuring me this was traditionally an “excellent” show for the artists, the management made a lot of ill-considered changes (need I say for the worse) and totally alienated both exhibitors and patrons, with the end result that the kindest thing I can say about my five day experience there was that I met some nice people at the show and got to visit with some old friends (as in long-standing, of course) who live in the area. As sales go, though, it tanked.

In addition to the customers being soaked for parking and entry fees so that they were pretty cross by the time they got in the doors (if they could find them) and not much in the mood for buying, we were also victimized by being set up in what was essentially a construction zone. The art booths were against what will ultimately be an inside dividing wall, but for the moment is acting as an outside wall. My booth area was so cold I had to borrow wool socks, sweaters and long underwear from the friend I was staying with, and even at that it was barely tolerable most of the time, and on a few occasions I thought a hard hat might be a good idea as well. The building that housed the show in previous years was a pile of rubble, having recently been knocked down, but there was no signage or anything to indicate to our customers that the show was actually carrying on in the new building, which was accessible only by following a long and convoluted set of narrow and twisting alleyways. Add that to virtually no local advertising for the show, and it has an impact of customer numbers. All in all, a pretty unfortunate experience.
On the plus side, though, by the end of the show the management representative that was checking in with us did seem to have a very clear idea of the ways things had gone sideways this year, and seemed sincere in his desire to make things fall into place again for next year’s show and sale. A lot would have to change before I’d consider doing this one again, but for the moment I’m not planning on burning any bridges, as the Saturday was actually quite good all round, and apparently that was representative of how the whole show has been in past years, so maybe it’s not too late to turn the clock back and make a recovery. I’m just peeved that the one year I chose to come was the one where it was pretty much a perfect storm of disasters for the exhibitors.
Since I don’t always read the fine print in the information packages, I made a bit of an error in my outward bound timing when heading north to Edmonton. I figured the set-up would be all day Tuesday, and knew we would need to be open for business on Wednesday. I got a good early (for me) start, and also had the advantage of “gaining” an hour during the trip as Alberta’s time zone is one hour later than in Saskatchewan at this time of year. That was all well and good until I made a pit stop when I was about two or so hours from Edmonton, and decided to check the set-up hours. We didn’t get access to our building until 7PM local time, which meant I was going to be arriving about five hours too early. The friend I was staying with wouldn’t be home from work until 5, or so I believed, so I had a few hours in which to do I knew not what. Then I remembered that Elk Island National Park was right en route, and I had always wanted to stop by and check out the bison herds there, but had never before had the time. So when we hit the park I turned off the highway and went in search of buffalo.
There was one good-sized herd off a side road at the south end, and I stopped for a while and got some shots. They weren’t as close as I would have liked, and while I am capable of mildly foolhardy things in pursuit of a good photo op, even I know better than to venture out on foot anywhere near a herd of wild buffalo. They are very fast when they want to be, and can be confrontational.
I decided to carry on farther into the park, reasoning (from the enormous amount of buffalo poop to be seen everywhere I looked) that there must be more than one herd in the area. I couldn’t see any as I tootled slowly along the unpopulated highway, but I did spot a very nicely coloured bush that I wanted to get a shot of. I got out of the van and was happily photographing my bush when a truck pulled up behind my van and just sat there. After a couple of minutes I got a bit nervous, as I thought maybe this was a Canada Parks truck and I was doing something wrong, so I got back in the van and carried on down the road, driving very slowly so they could pass me. They didn’t. They stayed the same distance behind me, also driving very slowly. Now I was getting quite concerned as to what exactly was going on here. After a couple of kilometers, there was another truck in view, this one coming towards me. The driver slowed as he approached me, making vigorous hand gestures and pointing to the south, all of which meant exactly nothing to me. By this time I was quite spooked, so I decided that at the first opportunity I would pull over to the side of the road, get out and ask the truck behind me what exactly was going on. My chance came, and I got onto the shoulder as best I could, then as I was twisting in my seat to undo the seat belt so I could get out, I realized I had parked right beside a small herd of buffalo. Now it all started to make sense.
The truck behind me stopped in the beginning because they thought I was photographing wildlife. The pointing man in the oncoming vehicle was trying to tell me to watch for the bison. Having figured all that out, I now felt quite free to go ahead and get my shots of the new bison herd without worrying that I was infringing on some sort of park rules. By this time the truck behind me had finally gone ahead of me and they had their cameras out too. I spent quite a bit of time with this herd, who stayed close by the side of the highway within a fairly limited area, until eventually they wandered off down the road.
Shot number one today shows the dramatic sky with a “personal” farm grain elevator, somewhere north of North Battleford in Saskatchewan.
Shot two is the nice orange bush that started the whole “truck following behind” incident, and the other shots show the small herd at the side of the road. It was a real treat to be so up close and personal with these guys. I think this is likely a young bull from the looks of him, with his small family which consisted of three or four cows and one baby from this year. He was very watchful over his little herd, and had the good fortune of one of his ladies appearing to be an older and experienced cow who would likely be the “boss cow” and titular herd leader, with the bull providing security service and general back-up. Both close-up shots are of the bull, whose horns are typically more curved and a bit stouter than those of the cows.
These are Plains Bison. Elk Island Park has both Plains Bison and Wood Bison, which are somewhat different from each other. I have learned over the years how to tell them apart by their different characteristics, but there is a local area joke where a nearby resident says to the tourist, “That’s a Wood Bison” and the tourist says “How can you tell them apart?”, to which the local answers, “We’re on the south side of the highway”–the joke here being that the highway divides the park and the Plains Bison live on the north side while the Wood Bison reside on the south side.

©Copyright 2008 by Judy Wood. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Judy Wood’s website.

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Badgers and Buffalo

July 29th, 2008 | By Donna Ridgway

Photograph of a bison taken by Donna Ridgway in Montana. All rights reserved.
Traveling along the Rocky Mountain Front is full of delights. And this buffalo is one of them! Just like in the old days, you see them roaming across the Montana landscape.

These buffalo had been rubbing against the fence, leaving patches of soft wool. We gathered some just to have the feel of it. Buffalo fiber is becoming an industry, it’s as soft as a cloud in your hand. Garments made from it, would feel wonderful.

If you click the image, you can see a larger version.
Photo of a prairie dog village in Montana, copyright Donna Ridgway. All rights reserved.

Last night, Robert was working on the pickup, giving it a tune up. When he finished, he came in and said, “Let’s go try it out, to see if I helped it any.” (He did, it ran as smooth as silk!)

So I grabbed the camera and off we went. About 6 miles from here, we have a buffalo jump state park. They’re in the process of changing it’s name, so I don’t know what it’s called now, it used to be Ulm/Pishkin State park.

On top of the ancient buffalo jump, is a prairie dog village. This badger didn’t seem to know they’re an endangered species, he roamed around hunting until we finally saw him choose his prairie dog and eat it.

He must have been about 300 yards away from us, but I took photos anyway, I knew he’d run if I came any closer to him, plus I’m afraid to walk through the grass up there, as there are so many rattlesnakes.

So this is a very cropped version of the photo, but still enough detail to see the badger as he hunts through the village.

Poor old prairie dogs are watching, and wondering, is he going to choose me for supper tonight?


Hope you enjoy the photos! Stay tuned for my next post of some white tail buck deer in the velvet, and a coyote….

Donna
Email Me if you have questions, or want to inquire about purchasing a painting or photo.

Remember, you can find horse art , Western art, Mule and Donkey art
wildlife art, cow art, animal paintings, and my reference photos for sale on my website.

©Copyright 2008 by Donna Ridgway. See original post here.
To learn more about this artist, visit Donna Ridgway’s website.

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