Bill Schiess

Last Tuesday, I ran up to the Kilgore area to check to see if the hawks had started gathering for their fall migration and found a few Ferruginous hawks and many Red-tailed hawks. The hawks appear to be shattered, and the red-tailed hawks are still babysitting their kids. After driving down a few of the […]

Labor Day found me without a fishing partner due to illness, so I headed to Ririe Reservoir to observe how the fishing was going for both man and birds. Before the sun came up, the sky was busier than the boats with 11 Ospreys and two Bald eagles looking for breakfast. An osprey successfully harvested […]

Tuesday evening, after spending the morning picking huckleberries, I drove out to the south side of Mud Lake to see if I could see some birds beginning their fall migration. The first birds I ran into were a small flock of Loggerhead shrikes, a songbird that tries to feed on other songbirds. This small flock […]

For the past two weeks, my friend, Mike Bruton, has taken me kokanee fishing on Ririe Reservoir while I continue to recuperate from a heart attack. The fishing for kokanee continues to get more successful for us as we learn more and the fish are in the process of growing rapidly. Many of the two-year […]

“The fishing was typical for opening weekend for keeping fish on Henrys Lake,” commented Alton Hansen of Rexburg. “It was a little slow but produced quality fish for us. I took a neighbor, Beto Avila and his father-in-law, Antonio Flores, fishing and both caught memorable fish for their first time fishing the famed lake. Antonio […]

“There is plenty of water at Camas this year,” a ninety-something-year-old recent widower, Ron Dennis, told me Thursday morning when we met. “After two years of no water, the birds are sure enjoying some full ponds.” I had been out at the Camas National Wildlife Refuge on Monday and Wednesday watching some Sandhill cranes build […]

For many years, bald eagles have flown in from around southern Idaho each evening to roost in the large cottonwoods near the Camas National Wildlife Refuge headquarters. They usually start arriving an hour before sunset and usually leave before sunrise the next morning to hunt for meals. They may fly up to 50 miles away […]

Last Friday night about two inches of snow fell in the Rexburg area, so after cleaning my driveway I headed out Saturday morning to the Mud Lake area to look for some wildlife to photograph. As I hit Sage Junction I was greeted by some very thick fog, not a good omen for photographs. I […]

The storm of the year did not show up last weekend, as predicted, but put at least an inch and a half of snow on the ground to finally end rock hunting for the year. What a bummer — not enough snow or cold to help with the ice fishing dream and no place to […]

Early Thanksgiving morning, I pulled around a corner on the auto-route through Camas National Wildlife Refuge and my lights caught two White-tailed bucks in a fierce battle. It was half an hour before sunup and with the heavy cloud cover, it was difficult to see what was going on, but the rattling of antlers continued […]

DUBOIS — My friend Steve and I decided to run out to Lone Pine and see if the pocket of Rocky Mountain bighorn sheep were still there and active on Wednesday morning. On the way out, we ran into several large herds of prong-horn antelope and stopped long enough to photograph a few of them. […]

“Hey, I’ve got a Steller’s jay in my yard,” a friend called me on Monday last week. I hurried over, but it was gone by the time I got there. “He left our place and went over to the neighbors but didn’t stay there long either.” During the snowstorm on Tuesday, a pair of Steller’s […]

While driving along the marshy area west of Mud Lake this past week, I saw an old friend flying low across the bulrush and cattails. It was the first American bittern that I have seen in several years. I saw inland near a grass covered bank and stopped close to the area. It was not […]

What a week! For six days, the only things flying were snowflakes that went faster than greased lightning. Most power poles had the wet snow glued to their southwest side. In places, fallen trees and limbs took out the electricity for thousands. Southeastern Idaho was blanketed by snow measuring from a foot to over two […]

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When a friend shows Bill pictures of rocks he's only dreamt of, he goes sliding down a mountain on his backside to collect heavenly stones in "Hell’s Hole."

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“Last Monday, we had about 500 mallards join the approximately 1500 trumpeter swans in the corn field,” Josh Rydalch, a Regional Wildlife biologist for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game told me on Thursday. “The swans are tall enough to get the ears off the standing corn and I guess the ducks will be …

EXTREME CAUTION NEEDS TO BE EXERCISED AT RIRIE AS THE WARM WEATHER AND THE RAIN THIS WEEK HAS CAUSED PRESSURE RIDGES TO DEVELOP AND THE ICE TO BREAK APART IN PLACES. IT IS EXTREMELY DANGEROUS! Ririe Reservoir froze over earlier than usual allowing some fishermen to begin ice fishing on December 22, four days earlier …

While watching Trumpeter swans and Mallard ducks feeding along the Texas Slough in the Burton area, west of Rexburg, two flashes of powder-blue caught my attention. The raucous rattling sound indicated a pair of belted kingfishers were chasing each other along warm seeps where minnows were trapped in pockets of water. The male had caught …