It's January and the bald eagles are back. In the winter they like to sit in this tall tree overlooking a zillion geese on a half-frozen pond. Once in a while both of them sit there side-by-side with warm evening light which makes a nice photo.

At the Rocky Mountain Arsenal National Wildlife Refuge you can drive through the open range where the bison live. Usually they are far away but this day they were very close to the road. I parked and watched them for a while as they munched on grass under the fresh snow. Eventually they trudged across the road, close enough for some portraits.

I first saw this juvenile red tail hawk sitting on the ground beside the road as I drove out of my neighborhood. I didn't think much of it--surely it won't be there for long. After I saw it there four more times, I got my camera. This time it was eating a fresh vole, pulling on the vole viscera and gulping down furry globs.

It is rare to see a bear in Rocky Mtn Natl Park but this day I was lucky. It came walking through the grass and then easily climbed up this tree. A few minutes later, after a wary glance at the burgeoning crowd of humans, she climbed back down. So what was so special about this tree?

Turned out her two cubs were way up high in that tree. With mother's encouragement, they eventually climbed down the tree. Then all three hurried off into the woods.

Baby elk are born in late May. They are not easy to see because mama elk conceal their calves under tall grass or bushes while they graze nearby. I was a bit surprised to see this adorable baby elk curled up and hiding under a bush very close to the road. The calf's camouflage is very good and everyone drove past without seeing this calf. (of course I didn't point it out)

Two weeks later, on this morning in mid June, all the mama elk had their calves out in the meadow. It was like the first day of kindergarten. There were several dozen cows and lots of calves.

A calf would nuzzle its mother and sometimes mama would stop and nurse the calf. That elk milk must be powerful stuff since these calves are less than a month old and already pretty big.

They come to my backyard serviceberry tree in mid June and devour the ripening berries. Finches and robins come too, and some robins are real bullies. Before I ever saw a waxwing, I thought they were big like bluejays, but they are actually quite small.

I always enjoy seeing a pika scampering around on the alpine tundra. All summer they diligently gather mouthfuls of plants, then rapidly scamper across the rocky tundra to their cache under jagged rocks. They only pause for a fraction of a second along the way, making photography challenging. A pika may look like a mouse but they are actually in the rabbit family. They do not hibernate and remain active during the long alpine winter under the blanket of snow, living on their cache of plants.

This sleepy fellow appeared in Sprague Lake in RMNP occasionally. The lake is so shallow that he can walk completely across it, sometimes stopping to graze on aquatic vegetation. Mostly he just stood there motionless. Maybe he is waiting for his buddy Rocky the Squirrel.

Whoa, I saw a second bear in RMNP this year. That is exactly two more bears than I have seen in the last decade. This big black bear wandered across the hillside, stopped to scratch an itch, looked around, and then sniffed.

It went straight into the nearest bush and gorged on the berries and leaves. It was not at all finnicky. Later on it pulled branches down with its enormous paw and devoured those too. Gotta get fat for the winter.

This big 7x7 bull elk was busy strutting his stuff to try to impress his cows. When that didn't work, he would rake his antlers in the grass. A bit of lingering morning fog in the streambed made that lovely bluish color.