SNAPSHOTS

In the spring of 2019, Jacelyn Bronte of Bozeman spotted a pair of nesting sandhill cranes at a wetland just north of town. She visited the birds regularly for the next few weeks. After the pair hatched two eggs, Bronte says she spent “hours and hours” photographing the family from about 20 yards away with a 200–500 mm telephoto lens. Known as “colts,” sandhill chicks often climb up onto a resting parent to stay warm in the feathers. “What I like about this shot is the relationship between the mom and the colt. It was just the second day after hatching, and already it could climb right up there,” says Bronte, who works as a clinical psychologist when she’s not photographing wildlife. Bronte lost track of the family after it moved to denser cattail stands to avoid dogs and walkers using a nearby trail. “But then a month later I heard from a National Geographic videographer who’d been filming them that both colts were still alive,” she says. n

“It’s the end of the road in the most remote place you can imagine,” says Glasgow photographer Sean R. Heavey of his photograph titled “Welcome to Bonetrail.” Heavey visited the site, roughly 50 miles (as the crow flies) southwest of Glasgow, early last summer with Glasgow Courier editor A.J. Etherington (seen in the blue shirt along the right-hand bluff) in search of scenic vistas and story opportunities. “In western Montana, it’s the mountains that are majestic, but here

in eastern Montana it’s the way the sky interacts with the land that builds the majesty,” Heavey says of the photograph. “What I also like about this image is how your eye goes through the opening in the bluff then drops down to discover the lake in the background, like it’s a hidden gem. That’s what Fort Peck is. It’s not like Flathead or other lakes, where you can look at it from the highway. To see Fort Peck, you need to practically drive to the end of the earth.” n