SNAPSHOTS

Mike Anich, a professional wildlife and landscape photographer who lives in the Bitterroot Valley near Darby, was hiking on one of his regular winter routes near Lake Como when he spotted this whitetail buck and doe up ahead. “I squeezed off a couple of shots, and then they were gone, and that was it,” he says. “I don’t have much else to say about the photo, other than I like it.” n

Every winter, flocks of Bohemian waxwings descend on towns across Montana to feed on mountain ash berries. Lee Nelson, a retired FWP fisheries biologist and amateur photographer, shot these waxwings as they were devouring berries from the ash in his yard last February. “There were hundreds of them in the flock,” he says. “They were moving so fast that I put my camera on its fastest shutter speed and started firing away, hoping I could get at least some of the birds in focus.” Of the roughly 1,000 photos Nelson took that afternoon, only a handful turned out. “With this particular shot, I was lucky,” he says. “I like how the birds look like a squadron of fighter jets, and how that one at the top seems to look right at you.” n