June Strawberry Full Moon 001

June’s full moon is called the Strawberry Moon. I drove to Two Harbors to photograph it next to the Edna G. tugboat. When you use a large telephoto lens, it makes the moon look huge and it did have a strawberry like color.

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June Strawberry Full Moon 002

It was a clear beautiful evening to watch the moon come up over Lake Superior.

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June Strawberry Full Moon 003

With the wide angle lens the moon looks quite small.

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Whitetail Fawn 001

As I was standing there waiting for the moon to rise I looked down and found a whitetail fawn on the edge of the road. I thought it was going to get caught in the tangled brush.

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Whitetail fawn 002

It did struggle through and made it to his mom who was feeding on the vegetation.

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Whitetail Fawn 003

It was fun to see the two interact with each other.

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Whitetail Fawn 004

My last view of the fawn was as it looked back at me through the tall grass.

It was pretty dark when I took this photo so you can see that his wet nose is reflecting the green from the grass. For those of you that are photographers I took this at ISO 10,000.

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Rusty 001

I am including some more photos of Rusty the friendly grouse because he was so fun to spend more time with this week.

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Rusty 002

I spent 7 days with Rusty and he became so tame that I could photograph him from about 4 feet away.

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Rusty 003

He would drum on two different logs but other than eating his drumming went on all day every day.

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Broad-winged Hawk

One day Rusty flattens himself out on the log his head and wings down. Completely camouflaged. I was wondering what was going on until I see a hawk fly over. How he knew that hawk was coming was amazing. The broad-winged hawk landed in a tree above Rusty but when he saw me he flew off. I don't think the broad-winged hawk was a danger to Rusty as they go after smaller things than grouse but it sure scared him.

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Rusty 004

Soon Rusty was back drumming.

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Rusty 005

Closeup.

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Rusty 006

One day I moved my tripod and he looked down at me and jumped off his log. I thought I scared him but he ran at me and picked up an insect that I had exposed under a leaf after moving the tripod leg. I knew he accepted me in his territory after that.

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Rusty 007

The last day a female answered his drumming for the second time while I was there. Rusty went into full display.

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Rusty 008

He looked pretty proud.

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Rusty 009

My last view of him for the year was as he was running toward the female with his ruff puffed up, tail spread and head bobbing back and forth. Hopefully he will be back next year.

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White Pine 001

Rusty has sure picked a beautiful area. Here is a view of the entrance to his claimed spot in the Superior National Forest.

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White Pine 002

I stop to admire this tree every time I walk in to see him.

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