Creative Exits #1
Bozeman, Montana
2016

A lot of bronc riders don’t make their eight seconds, but perhaps they should be awarded style points for their unique dismounts.

Tail-Dragger
Bozeman, Montana
2016

I’m pretty sure this cow didn’t like dragging the cowboy around the arena any better than the cowboy enjoyed being dragged. What puzzled me, and likely the cow as well, was why the cowboy kept hanging on given he didn’t seem to be slowing the cow down appreciably.

Cow Chaos
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Turn six teams of mounted ranch hands lose with a dozen wild cows with the task of getting some milk out of them and this is the kind of mayhem that results.

If Day Was Night and Black Was White #2
Bozeman, Montana
2016

If Day Was Night and Black Was White #1
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Postcard From Home
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Turf War
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Another conflict for space among magpies. In this case instant, the one with the choice perch on a dumpster is about to get usurped by a more aggressive colleague.  (This photo was obviously taken earlier in the year when there was snow on the ground. We can get snow here in July, but not that much, especially when temps have been hovering around 90.)

Run Away
Bozeman, Montana
2016

The magpie on the right was intimidated by the one on the left, but only enough to run quickly around to the other side of the post, not fly away.

Feed Me!
Bozeman, Montana
2016

The crow on the right is the same one that was in the “Black Angel” post from the other day. It was relentlessly chasing the other crow, doing all the strutting and wing waving (all while squawking like crazy) as a means of pestering it to share the food it had found in the parking lot of a McDonald’s restaurant.

I thought this behavior was a bit odd for adult crows, but when I researched it I found that young crows just out of the nest are almost indistinguishable in size from their parents and that the parents will continue to feed the juveniles for some time after they leave the nest. All the same, for the amount of pestering it needed to do to get the parent to finally part with the food, it seems like it would have been easier just to find its own stray french fry or whatever to pick at.

Magritte in Yellowstone
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Another in what is turning out to be a series of Yellowstone-based images imitating or parodying the styles of master painters. In this case, my inspiration was from this Magritte painting:

Man in a Bowler Hat
Rene Magritte
1964