The long awaited Lynx

Is the plural lynx or lynxes? Pretty sure it's not lynxi. And the collective noun? Chain? Pestering? You've got to love English some days.

In any case, while visiting the Yukon Wildlife Preserve our tour group got to visit the 3 lynx. Lindsay took us into the enclosure (inside!) along with a bucket of meat and a highly engineered specialty tool to protect us. The cats are cautious around us, but they know that white bucket has lunch, and got surprisingly close. It's sometimes hard to know what cats are thinking, but the impression I got was they thought they could bring us down and eat us if they had to, but it would be a lot of work, and it's a whole lot easier to wait for that nice human to toss it to us.

Along the way we visited several other charismatic mammals that they're taking care of, though we didn't get inside all the enclosures. Oddly enough, while the lynx have the reputation as dangerous predators, they aren't the most dangerous animals. They wouldn't let us inside the moose enclosure. While it is extremely photogenic, it could also easily gore and trample a human without really noticing.

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2. I got carried away with lynx photos. There are many. A great many. The plan is to add them to the Of the Day feature till they're gone. This will be the case with many Yukon photos. Stay tuned!

I'm not sure which of the three lynx this is, but I think it's the mom.

3. You get one of the tree sequences. Lindsay uses the high tech protection tool to put a chunk of meet up on a tree limb. This whole sequence took only a few seconds.

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22. We also visited this cute fox.

23. And the caribou.

I wasn't happy with how the photos of some of the other critters turned out. They were a little too far away for the lens I was using. 

Of the Day

Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape

Tombstone

Green Fools, a clown funeral.

Film

This might need a bit of explanation. This is a 37 minute exposure of Acros II B&W film. That black outline in the lower right is a gateway arch with a bunch of cowboy boots nailed to it. The composition idea was to have a bit more of it in view, but it's tough trying to compose a photo with a rangefinder in the dark on a low tripod for stability. I had light painted the boots, but clearly not enough. To get this effect digitally the photographer takes a number of short exposures, and uses specialty software to merge them. It can be a very clean image, where mine is not. This is only the second time I've tried this, and will likely try again.