Jerry Johnson Hot Springs, Idaho, January 2014. If you've been there in the winter, you know it's more like Jerry Johnson Lukewarm Springs. The trail was packed down and refrozen snow, sketchy even with YakTracks. This was a 30 second exposure on my old Nikon D5200.
#Landscape

Live trapping a Cape ground squirrel burrow, Namibia 2001. Unlike the related mountain ground squirrel, they form large social groups and live in communal burrows. I'd come back with boots absolutely covered in the god-awful "little devils" (buff.ly/10pKo0c)
Photo by Jane Waterman or Jim Roth

Tricolored heron hunting, Long Key State Park, Florida
youtu.be/bNtoXit3dQA
#birds #wildlifephotography

Sadly, probably the best picture I have of the Cape ground squirrel, Xerus inauris. This and the mountain ground squirrel, Xerus princeps, are why I went. In those pre-9/11 days, I had no trouble flying home with hundreds of samples in 95% ethanol. Namibia, 2001.
#mammals #wildlifephotography

Out today in @nature.com: our review on how single cells evolve into multicellular organisms. With Ozan Bozdag, @kaitong25.bsky.social, Peter Yunker, and @matthewherron.bsky.social.

rdcu.be/9ZuiKow9twKa

For an overview, check out the video below.

Lilac-breasted roller, Namibia (probably Etosha National Park), 2001. I was using a borrowed SLR with a 300mm lens and shooting slide film. I came back with 20 rolls of 36, which cost me around $400 to process (I was making ~$14k a year as a grad student at the time).
#birds #wildlifephotography

Me with meerkat, tea, and a bad haircut, summer (southern hemisphere winter) of 2001, on a farm in Namibia. I went to collect DNA from Xerus ground squirrels for my master's thesis and one of my first papers: doi.org/10.1111/j.13...
Photo credit Jane Waterman or Jim Roth, probably

I haven't been out since Blackwater, so I guess I'll post a few older photos. I took this photo of a peace lily with my 4x5 field camera in college. A contact print won a purchase award in Valencia Community College's 1994 juried competition and is in their permanent collection.
#blackandwhite

Sunset, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland
#landscape

Roseate spoonbill displacing white ibis, Audubon's Silver Bluff Sanctuary, South Carolina
youtu.be/RaFoIFnyueo
#birds #wildlifephotography

Lesser yellowlegs bathing, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland
#birds #wildlifephotography

I like this one for the sense of scale...the great blue heron dwarfs the yellowlegs and semipalmated sandpipers like a giant walking the earth. And they keep their distance, because yes, great blue herons will absolutely eat smaller birds if they can catch them.
#birds #wildlifephotography

More lesser yellowlegs drama, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland
#birds #wildlifephotography

Lesser yellowlegs drama, Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland. Both lesser and greater yellowlegs seem to have a hard time getting along, but I've only ever seen this behavior within species, never between the two.
#birds #wildlifephotography

If you can tell these two birds apart, you're a better birder than me. The first is a short-billed dowitcher, the second a long-billed, at least according to eBird's image ID, which has gotten amazingly good. Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland.
#birds #wildlifephotography

Another lifer for me at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge, Maryland: red-necked phalarope. All three phalarope species have reversed the usual sexual dimorphism and mating behavior, with females competing for and defending males, who incubate and raise the chicks.
#birds #wildlifephotography