Steve Moseley

This Nebraska photo, one of my favorites, seems sadly symbolic of photography on the featureless plain. We have a LBB (little brown bird, actually a long-billed dowitcher) wading in a shallow, temporary wetland next to … anyone, anyone? … a waterlogged corn root ball.

Photo courtesy Steve Moseley

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Today’s question … how to keep a photographer down on the farm after he’s lived in shutterbug Shangri-La?

Discuss.

An avid photo guy bringing his cameras back to his native corn country of eastern Nebraska after living in the epicenter of Yellowstone, the Bighorns, Beartooths, Pryors and more (Bighorn Canyon, McCullough Peaks, Clarks Fork Canyon and on and on), even though the departure was 20 years ago, still stings.

Back in my days at this newspaper, excursions afield were rife with bison, pronghorn and deer. Elk, bighorn sheep and bears were less frequent but still semi-routine. Moose, common on the North Fork when we first arrived, became rare by the time we left.

Mountain vistas you can’t believe. Heavy snow falling without a whisper of sound on the forest, flocking branches like Grandma’s old-timey Christmas tree. Sunrises and sunsets with glorious, pastel skies above jagged mountains below in black silhouette.

A shutterbug paradise if ever there was one.

And then came the reluctant move; our return to Buffalo Commons where corn is king. Western Nebraska is all about sandhills and grass and cow/calf operations, but the eastern third of the state where we live is covered in a blanket of corn and soybeans to the horizon, with ethanol plants (cleverly, we burn corn in our cars), feedyards and meat packing scattered throughout.

In my youth we enjoyed an abundance of pheasants and quail, but the aforementioned row crops, planted right up to the road ditches and watered by pivot irrigation beneath which any pre-existing habitat was cleared, make commercial game farms the only reliable place to find upland birds.

Waterfowl, thankfully, can still be observed in abundance part of the year.

For a wildlife photographer, the difference between the two states is stark to say the least.

I know. I know. The proof Nebraska can be the source of spectacular nature photography is abundant in the amazing images of others. I, however, remain mired and uninspired by comparison to northwest Wyoming.

We are visited each late winter by more than half-a-million sandhill cranes, the odd flock of whoopers and snow geese in the millions, but even that cannot stand against 365 days a year of immersion in your backyard paradise.

This Nebraska photo, one of my favorites, seems sadly symbolic of photography on the featureless plain. We have a LBB (little brown bird, actually a long-billed dowitcher) wading in a shallow, temporary wetland next to … anyone, anyone? … a waterlogged corn root ball. Of course.

Life is hard. Yet somehow we soldier on.