“Sunday Morning” takes us to San Juan National Forest in Colorado. Videographer: Scot Miller.
The San Juan National Forest covers the southern half of the massive and complex San Juan Mountains. There are numerous peaks, rivers, lakes, and remote stretches in the forest, including the Weminuche Wilderness, the largest in the state. Parts of the forest are accessible from Cortez, Durango, Pagosa Springs, Silverton, Telluride, and Ouray.
“Sunday Morning” leaves us this morning with elk bugling at Yellowstone National Park. Videographer: Doug Jensen.
Yellowstone’s autumn is defined in many ways-frost on morning grass, color creeping into shimmering aspen leaves, ice rimming mountain ponds. There are sights and smells to a Yellowstone autumn, elements that, if you’ve visited here many times, become as familiar as old friends. But nothing etches the lens through which we see fall as much as the rut of the elk, Cervus alaphus. The reason for this is almost entirely auditory.
If you’ve never heard the bugle of the bull elk during the fall rutting period, you are in for an experience that is at once thrilling and haunting. The sound of a bull elk bugling is something that draws many visitors to Yellowstone each autumn, for it is an experience as memorable as anything you are likely to have in the park. In most cases, the bugle starts low and throaty, rising to a high whistle, then dropping to a grunt or a series of grunts. It’s a sound that is difficult for the human alphabet to imitate, a guttural bellow, a shrill pitch, and a hollow grunting. A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-eeeeeeeeeeeeee-oh. Ee-uh. Ee-uh. Ee-uh. It’s an odd combination that, like the buzz of your first rattlesnake, you’ll never forget.
“Sunday Morning” takes us to Florida’s Sanibel Island, in calmer times, at the J.N. “Ding” Darling Wildlife Refuge. Videographer: Charles Schultz.
J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge, on the subtropical barrier island of Sanibel, is part of the largest undeveloped mangrove ecosystem in the United States. President Harry S. Truman signed an executive order creating the Sanibel National Wildlife Refuge in 1945 for the purpose of and in 1967 was renamed in honor of Jay Norwood Darling. It is world famous for spectacular migratory bird populations.
In these frozen peaks, a chameleon gives birth to live young as it is too cold to lay eggs out in the open.
In East Africa, during the day, on the high slopes of Mount Kenya the tropical sun keeps the cold at bay – but at night the frost descends. During this cycle of freeze and thaw, a pregnant high casqued chameleon must choose the right time to give birth, if her new-borns are to escape the deadly night freeze.
“Sunday Morning” takes us to field aglow in central South Dakota. Videographer: Kevin Kjergaard.
South Dakota consistently ranks as one of the world’s top sunflower producers. This makes late summer an amazing time to experience gorgeous yellow fields that seem to stretch forever.
Depending on the growing season, sunflowers begin to bloom sometime in late July or early August and stay brilliant for approximately 30 days. Young pre-bloom plants track the sun throughout the day and turn back to the east overnight, putting them in position to catch the morning sunlight. As they bloom and the heads become heavier, the flowers stay facing the east.
Preventing the Pacific Northwest icon’s extinction calls for aggressive intervention, including killing another owl species. Will we act fast enough?
The novelist attained fame with gripping works of eco-fiction. How hard could it be to rewild his own backyard?
Dinnertime is a gamble for Pallas’s cats, and this one’s hangry. Relative to their body size, they have the shortest legs of any cat, which makes attacking prey in a timely fashion somewhat tricky…
The Pallas’s cat, also known as the manul, is a small wild cat with long and dense light grey fur. Its rounded ears are set low on the sides of the head. Its head-and-body length ranges from 46 to 65 cm with a 21 to 31 cm long bushy tail.
“Sunday Morning” takes us among ospreys feathering their nests at the Delaware Bay estuary, near Morristown, New Jersey. Videographer: Jeff Reisly.
Unique among North American raptors for its diet of live fish and ability to dive into water to catch them, Ospreys are common sights soaring over shorelines, patrolling waterways, and standing on their huge stick nests, white heads gleaming. These large, rangy hawks do well around humans and have rebounded in numbers following the ban on the pesticide DDT. Hunting Ospreys are a picture of concentration, diving with feet outstretched and yellow eyes sighting straight along their talons.
Appenzell is a town in northeastern Switzerland, at the foot of the Alpstein mountains. Trails and cableways connect various summits, including towering Säntis peak. On the steep cliffs of the Ebenalp, the Wildkirchli cave complex houses a 17th-century chapel and hermitage. Nearby is the old Aescher inn, tucked into the side of a sheer cliff. Appenzell’s car-free center features wooden houses with colorful facades.
Boomers Daily 