100 Days in Glacier National Park Spectacular Photos

It never hurts to live near a national treasure that is replete with spectacular vistas; especially when you are a photographer. Chris Peterson, the Glacier Park Magazine editor, is not only fortunate enough to live by such a treasure, but to be a gifted photographer as well. His gift, coupled with our nation’s treasure, produced a set of 100 photos taken over 100 consecutive day, starting on May 1, 2009. Five of those 100 are shown below, with Chris’s permission and captions, but you can see the entire set by going to 100 days in Glacier National Park.

I first saw this collection during my regular RSS feed updates from boston.com’s The Big Picture: News stories in photographs.  If you are not familiar with this site, then do yourself a favor by getting connected with its regular photo displays. The photos always inspire and challenge the photographer in me.

Virtually every day I’ll hear a western tanager. But they’re almost always high in the canopy. The neotropical delights winter in Central America and migrate to Montana to raise their young. An absolutely fantastic bird and a great way to get to the halfway point. I haven’t had a chance to count the number of bird species I’ve been able to successfully photograph. But I do know this: I don’t have a black capped chickadee. You’ve got to be kidding me.

Alpine paintbrush are a nice way to start a garden.

Ponderosa pine groves aren’t very common in Glacier, which is maybe why they’re one of my favorite places. Spending an evening among 150-year-old plus trees towering 150 feet-plus above you has an undeniable charm. This is a digital conversion print. The original, in color, is pretty cool, too. I just feel simple today.

I had hoped to camp at Morning Star Lake and spend the last two days of this journey in the Cut Bank area, but a grizzly bear took up residence in the campground and it was closed. So I day hiked to the lake and on the way back, I was sitting in the trail on my pack overlooking the valley when (and I am not making this up) a wolverine walked within 15 feet of me. I grabbed the camera but it saw me and shot off down the trail and into the brush. Dejected, I began walking to the truck when I heard a racket above me. It was an irate Cooper’s Hawk. The hawk dive-bombed me several times and called at me. The reason? It had a fledgling in a nearby tree. The bird continued to dive-bomb me as I walked down the trail until I was no longer what it considered a threat. Cooper’s Hawks aren’t very big, but look at those talons. Now imagine them stuck in your neck.

Photographing calliope hummingbirds under ideal conditions is difficult. Sprinkle in mosquitos the size of houseflies, a stiff wind and failing light and I was lucky to get anything at all. Calliopes are the smallest bird in North America — slightly larger than my thumb. They’re pretty common in town, but this was the first one I’ve seen inside the Park boundaries. This year the serviceberry bushes have incredible numbers of flowers, which is a good thing for hummers and if we have some timely rains — bears. Bears love serviceberries. Calliopes do have one habit that makes them somewhat easier to photograph, if they have a perch they like, they’ll come back to it over and over again.