The year started off with keepers all day in a snowy Antarctica, where I spent time with chinstrap penguins like this one flapping his wings. These are the most common penguin in Antarctica, but ironically we saw fewer of them than the other six species. That made this encounter especially meaningful.
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We were fortunate to have good weather during most of our 20-day voyage to the Malvinas, South Georgia Island and Antarctica. Here, the sun peeks through the clouds to kiss the rocky Antarctic mainland.
During one of our Antarctic landings, we got caught in a snow squall with the Adelies, who have just as much trouble navigating the slippery boulder fields as I do. This might be my favorite of the more than 8,000 photos I shot during my monthlong trip. That sounds like a lot but it's fewer than 400 pics a day. Penguins walk over these rocks just like I do — as if they're about to fall on their faces!
My friend Doug and I started the year in Antarctica. I'm grateful that he asked me to go.
When we got back to Ushuaia, I was able to spend a few days exploring Tierra del Fuego National Park. This caracara let me follow it through the maritime forest while it hunted insects in the leaf litter.
Tierra del Fuego is home to wild horses. This mare got impatient with the unwanted attentions of the stallion behind her and left him in her dust. Watching a wild horse gallop around this river meadow at the edge of the world was memorable.
My photography was limited most of the summer by vertebral compression fractures that kept me in bed after work most days. In May I spent time with North American beavers at Fernald. They are confiding photo subjects if you're quiet. Here, a beaver restocks the underwater larder outside her lodge.
Sometimes in the evening I sit by a beaver pond at Fernald and just try to be present in the moment. There is something restorative about being around water. Being still and quiet often works to help me blend into the background like on this night when a male beaver cruised over to give me a sniff with his big Muppet nose before going about his nightly rounds.
A blue-gray gnatcatcher finds a colorful perch for a photo at Miami Whitewater. Spring migration is always far too short for me.
A family trip to Oak Island, North Carolina, let me get in some photography with my Uncle Mark, one of the best birders in America. But I also spied this little meadow vole in the marsh outside his beach house.
One spring surprise was a family of soras that let me spend time with them at Ellis Marsh. I have seen these marsh chickens only a handful of times in my life, so this was a great encounter.
Summer in Ohio means hummingbirds and hummingbird moths like this one at Mount Airy Arboretum.
No summer in Cincinnati would be complete without a visit to Joyce Park to see the thirteen-lined ground squirrels. They might be my favorite animal in Ohio.
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