From the rocky coasts of the Pacific Northwest’s mighty Pacific Ocean to the tops of the Canadian Rockies, through Florida Everglades’ River of Grass and across the painted deserts of the American Southwest then over the Appalachian Mountains … these galleries have a little bit of everything that the best of North American landscapes can offer.
Brushfoots
Gossamer Wings
Swallowtails
Skippers
Sulphurs and Whites
Moths
Metalmarks
North America is wildly rich in butterflies and moths. In the United States and Canada alone, there are roughly 750 species of butterflies and a whopping 11,000 species of moths! With careful and painstaking research, more new species are still being discovered all the time!
Birds A-M
Birds N-W
When it comes to birds, North America is fantastically rich in native species diversity. While some species are found all around the world, the vast majority are found only here and nowhere else.
Bison, Goats, Sheep
Squirrels, Chipmunks
Deer and Elk
Rabbits, Hares, Pikas
Rats, Mice, Voles
Seals and Sea Lions
Foxes, Wolves
Raccoons
Pigs
Pronghorns
Armadillos
Manatees
Bears
Weasels, Otters, Badgers
We mammals have come a long way since the time of the dinosaurs. We’ve conquered the land, sea and air. North America has more than 740 species alive today.
Dragonflies
Grasshoppers
Arachnids
Insects
Marine Invertebrates
Snails, Mollusks
Crustaceans
Myriapods
96% of all currently living animal lifeforms alive today are invertebrates. Included are all the insects, arachnids, worms, crabs, shellfish, starfish, corals, and more! One thing they all have in common? No backbone.
Alligators, Crocodiles
Lizards
Snakes
Turtles, Tortoises
Long before the first dinosaur walked the earth, reptiles ruled the world. 65 million years after the last dinosaur drew its final breath, North America’s modern crocodiles, alligators, snakes, lizards, and turtles and tortoises are still keeping our native natural history alive!
Tree Frogs
Toads
Spadefoots
True Frogs
Salamanders
Did you know the word “amphibian” means “two lives”? All amphibians start their lives in the underwater, but after they go through a series of metamorphosis stages to adulthood, most trade gills for lungs and live the rest of their lives out of the water.
Arethuseae
Calypsoeae
Cranichideae
Cymbidieae
Cypripedieae
Epidendreae
Malaxideae
Maxillarieae
Neottieae
Orchideae
Pogoniinae
Polystachyeae
Triphoreae
Vandeae
Vanilleae
One of the largest families in the plant kingdom with nearly 28 thousand species around the globe, orchids are also one of the most popular and most sought-after flowering plants in history. In Victorian times, entire foreign expeditions were sent around the world at great personal risk led by fearless (and often ruthless) orchid hunters to acquire the next new unknown exotic species from the most distant corner of the Earth. Luckily for us, North America is rich with unique native species found nowhere else in the world!
Wildflowers by Color
Wildflowers by Family
By far our largest collection of galleries, these wildflower image sets are arranged by both color and by taxonomic family for use as a casual identification tool or field guide, or for more thorough scientific research for deeper understanding.
Pitcher Plants
Venus Flytraps
Bladderworts
Butterworts
Sundews
Sometimes called insectivorous plants, these amazing plants have adapted to a life in places where the soil is so poor in nutrients, that they’ve gained the ability to grow by trapping their food with modified leaves. By taking root in a harsh habitat, they have eliminated most of their competition from other plants.
Light-spored Gilled Mushrooms
Brown-spored Gilled Mushrooms
Dark-spored Gilled Mushrooms
Polypore and Crust Fungi
Morels
Jelly-like Fungi
Unique & Unusual Mushrooms
Puffballs
Club, Coral and Fan-like Fungi
Cup-fungi
Boletes
Lichens
Slime Molds
Without the enormous and nearly invisible world of fungi, there would be no forests or plants as we know them, no animals living, feeding and hunting in the forests and nothing to break down what organic matter is left. It’s this wonderful (and often weird) group that keeps nutrients moving and cycling through our world’s ecosystems.
Fruits and Berries
Cacti
Ferns
Bromeliads
Agaves and Yuccas
Palms
Saprophytes
Mosses
Horsetails
Deciduous Trees
Coniferous Trees
Botanical Images
This last and final collection of galleries include all the non-wildflower images such as our native trees, ferns, palms, fruits and berries, cacti, saprophytes, mosses, bromeliads and more!
Last winter as we were saying our goodbye to Washington State which had been our home for the past decade, we visited Icicle Creek in Washington's Cascade Mountains, a place my family and I had hiked the previous summer and I was after one last hunt for winter...
On a trip to Southern Oregon and the Oregon Coast to photograph wild Pacific landscapes and a profusion of wild lilies and native bog orchids further inland, I ended up by accident in Medford, OR where I got this unexpected fantastic view of Mount Shasta from the top...
Perhaps the most strikingly beautiful of all of the large dragonflies of Western Canada and the United States, the eight-spotted skimmer (Libellula forensis) contrasts greatly with its environment, whether it is in lowland marshes and ponds or along desert creeks and...
Back in the swing of things posting new images! One of the coolest finds during our first couple of outings into the Rio Grande Valley was finding this Texas tortoise (Gopherus berlandieri). Very similar to the gopher tortoises (Gopherus polyphemus) that I often found...
I'm back from a bit of a hiatus! We moved from the Seattle, Washington area to the Southern tip of Texas in the Rio Grande Valley last month, and it's been a mad scramble to get up and running again! In order to get back in the groove of posting new photos, I'm going...
The endangered and endemic Florida scrub jay is a cooperative breeder. When the offspring leave the nest, they stay with their parents and help them raise next year's brood instead of going off to raise young on their own. MORE PHOTOS OF BIRDS MORE INTERESTING NATURE...
Moose are the largest of the deer family, and can weigh up to 1600 pounds, and eat up to 100 pounds of vegetation at a time! While incredibly nearsighted, they can be very aggressive and can and will charge if threatened, and are capable of running at 35 mph! MORE...
Five very interesting things about moss: 1. Moss was the first plant on earth. 2. Moss don’t have roots, but rather thread-like rhizoids that help them stay snugly anchored in place. 3. While most mosses love wet habitats, some can be found in deserts and even growing...
While tachinid flies at first might look like large housefly, they have a very different lifestyle. These large spiky flies enjoy a plant-based diet, feeding on nectar from flowers and other botanical treats. But when it comes to laying eggs, it gets much darker and...
Did you know that barnacles are a type of stationary crustacean? Barnacles are in the same family as shrimp, crabs and lobsters and like most crustaceans, they are omnivorous predators that eat whatever they can catch with their modified “feeler” feet (called cirri)...
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