25 Sep Images of the West: Birds of Paradise

No one comes to Montana’s Paradise Valley just for the birds.

There are greater things that draw people to this spectacular corridor, which is the northern gateway to Yellowstone National Park and stretches 52 miles from Livingston south to Gardiner.

A bathing cinnamon teal enjoys the clean waters of a private ranch pond. These vibrant spring ducks offer a multitude of photo opportunities until they lose their colors in mid-summer.

Stunning Absaroka and Gallatin mountains rise above it all. Bison, elk, and antelope follow primal paths. It’s home to America’s first national park, Montana’s first dude ranch, world-class trout fishing, and thrilling white-water rafting.History. Beauty. Play.

A wintering visitor from above the tree line, a black rosy finch rejoins its flock from a mullein plant perch. I am most likely to see these speedy passerines in March and April.

Leave no doubt, though — and I say this without hesitation — the birds are the most incredible accent to all this wonder.

Here, mountain bluebirds fly bluer than the sky. Golden eagles are more fierce than the most brutal winter. I’ve seen Canada geese nest in caves. I’ve seen tanagers dot evergreens like Christmas ornaments. I’ve seen 50 raptors circle carrion. And I’m sure anglers on the Yellowstone River have watched osprey snatch the very brown trout they are after.

Death besets life in Paradise Valley. A magpie discovers the last morsels on an elk carcass during a snowy January day.

As a photographer, I watch the beauty of the birds match their surroundings. Maybe other places garner greater numbers or more strangely unique habitat, but this special place in Montana keeps the birds very happy.

Vivid oranges and yellows scream through the trees when western tanagers arrive in late May, but only for a few days.

The eyes have it. When judging any golden eagle photo I make, I always look at the eyes to see how piercing they can be. This raptor is my favorite bird to photograph.

Shooting in my backyard, both literally and figuratively, I try not to miss any opportunity, bird or birdscape. Find the bird. Then find the story.

In the next few years, private funding is set to build a 56-mile Yellowstone Heritage Trail from Livingston to Gardiner. Traveling an abandoned rail line, it will add a new level of freedom, where visitors and residents alike can get a closer look at this paradise and, of course, at the true arbiters of freedom here: the avian life that flies high above.

An osprey expert once told me, “It ain’t Disney out there.” The valley’s ospreys have to endure many travails, from predators to fierce storms like this one headed straight toward the nest.

What’s this? A three-legged bird? Nope. Just a very unusual perspective of a great blue heron returning to its Yellowstone nest with a stick.

Jeff Moore is a Livingston, Montana-based writer and photographer who has always focused on birds. His work has been featured in Ducks Unlimited Magazine and Montana Outdoors, as well as recognized by the National Audubon Society. Communication Arts awarded his Canada goose flight shots several years running, and Sotheby’s relied on his studio photo of an eider decoy to sell one of the most expensive sporting art lots ever auctioned; jeffmooreimages.net.