Jacques Fortier
Jacques Fortier
@jacquesf@jacquesfortierart.com
491 posts
34 followers
  • White-Tailed Coyote

    Most Coyotes have black-tipped tails. I’ve been photographing a lot of Coyotes lately in Point Reyes that have a white tip at the very end of its tail, surrounded by a ring of black. These are less common, but from what I can tell far from unheard of in most Coyote populations. This is my…

  • Burrowing Owl on Alert

    Burrowing owls live life on hard mode. Unlike other owls who can tuck themselves deep in the branches of a high tree to avoid detection by predators, burrowing owls are vulnerable to air and ground attacks. As a result, they constantly have their head on a swivel, ready to dive into a burrow at the…

  • Intense Bobcat

    Yup, it’s a bobcat. While it looks like the cat is staring directly at me, I have been triaged with feline dispassion as neither predator nor prey and therefore not worthy of notice. There’s a gopher hole directly between us, and the bobcat is stealthily taking its last step before hunkering down and waiting for…

  • Blue Hour Tule Elk

    A Tule Elk bull on the coast after sunset.

  • Practice

    A juvenile Elephant Seal practices his dominance display. Elephant Seals take quite a while to mature. The females breed at 3-6 years, while it takes five years for the males to develop the beginnings of the nose or trunk that gives them their name, and another three years to grow into a full-sized alpha male.

  • Western Bluebird

    I really love western bluebirds. They have such a bold combination of colors, but each of the hues shows a certain amount of restraint. It’s like they did what I do when editing photos: find the spot where things start to look garish, and then back to a more reasonable point. In this photo, the…

  • Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk Portrait

    Juvenile Red-Tailed Hawk.

  • Cactus Wren

    A Cactus Wren perches on a Teddybear Cholla cactus.

  • Cooper’s Hawk at an Oasis

    A Coopers Hawk perches on a Desert Fan Palm trunk in Murray Canyon near Palm Springs. The Coachella Valley (home to present-day Palm Springs) used to be half-covered by Lake Cahuilla, then fed by the Colorado river. After the river changed course in the 1500s, the lake dried up and the Cahuilla people were sustained…

  • Cooper’s Hawk Among the Palms

    Regular followers of my posts might recall that I love photographing raptors in the rain (others, take note!). I don’t think I ever expected to do that in the middle of the desert, but here’s a juvenile Cooper’s Hawk perching on a Desert Fan Palm trunk near Palm Springs while a light rain falls.