Photo Essay: Spring Flora & Fauna

A salamander playing hide-and-go-seek in the mossy forests of Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

A male ruby-throated hummingbird watches over his feeder territory in Northeast Tennessee. Despite their small size, they will ferociously guard their food source, chasing off any intruders.

A Bradford pear tree offers full spring bloom along the trail at Laurel Run Park in Church Hill, Tennessee.

A white-tailed deer fawn hides in the grass of Big Meadows in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia as it waits for its mother to return to feed it.

While momma black bear forages below, her cubs play in the branches of a tulip poplar tree about 50-feet from a residential backyard deck in Asheville, North Carolina. From the photographer: “I tell people I am on the bear highway. As a lazy wildlife photographer, I don’t have to go any further than my back deck to photograph animals.”

Peach trees are in full bloom on a late March afternoon at Hyders Farm, located near Landrum, South Carolina. The mountain in the distance is 3,240-foot Hogback Mountain, the southeastern-most protrusion of the Blue Ridge Escarpment.

In early March, daffodils begin blooming throughout Cades Cove as Great Smoky Mountains National Park bids adieu to winter and welcomes spring.

These goslings were photographed at Pandapas Pond, just outside of Blacksburg, Virginia. From the photographer: “I had taken my granddaughter there to walk the path around the pond. The parents were out in the water with the rest of the little ones, but these two stayed just long enough for me to get a couple of shots before scurrying into the water to join their family.”

Cades Cove is certainly not known for its tree frog population, but don’t tell this little guy. Cloaked in green and resting on a green leaf with a green background this tree frog fit perfectly in its spring-green setting.

A red fox kit gets a morning bath outside the barn its family used as a den in Northeast Tennessee.

Growing in a patch on the banks of Dunloup Creek in the New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia, this crested dwarf iris is a harbinger of spring. From the photographer: “I look for them every year as a prime example of the delicate and colorful beauty of spring wildflowers.”