Desert Animals

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Coyotes live on alluvial fans where there are plenty of rodents to eat. Nowadays, it seems that they also live along roads where tourists feed them. You can get great pictures because they circle you at a distance of about 50 feet until they decide you aren't going to feed them, then they hide behind a bush.

Two people posing at the "Devil's Golf Course", a particularly rough part of the salt pan in Death Valley.

A few years ago, the rains were timed well enough to make Death Valley bloom all over. This orange and black beetle, about 2 inches long, was cutting off each flower and eating it. Only later did I identify this as a species of "Blister Beetle"; the type that can shoot hot acid if disturbed too much.

These were handheld pictures with a Canon 90mm tilt shift lens. I used only a bit of tilt, or shift, and I shut the aperture down to f/8 to get more depth of field.