Winter bison at Elk Island Park

Rest­ing win­ter bison

It’s been a win­try cou­ple of days in the Edmon­ton area, but these bison don’t seem to mind it. I took this pho­to­graph out at Elk Island Park recent­ly, and I love how the fresh snow is just lying on top of the large bison. I had the good for­tune of being able to watch a small herd slow­ly mov­ing along and graz­ing through the snow for about an hour before they moved fur­ther off into the trees.

I made a lot of images of the herd, but I was sur­prised when I got home and could look at the pho­tos large on my com­put­er, how many times there were stray pieces of grass in front their faces—not nec­es­sar­i­ly ruin­ing the shot, but def­i­nite­ly dis­tract­ing. I guess it makes sense—the bison spent almost the entire time graz­ing with their heads just above the ground, and the dried grass was often over half a meter high. It’s just inter­est­ing how, while I was there, my brain could ignore the visu­al dis­trac­tions, but at home, the light yel­low-brown slash­es against the deep, dark brown real­ly stood out. Some­thing to watch for next time…

P.S. I hope you like the “new and improved” larg­er in-post images start­ing with this entry. As always, you can click an image to view it full-screen. Enjoy!