Thomas Bancroft — Author • Scientist • Naturalist
My New Book from WSU Press
The narrator embarks on a week-long trip to Alaska’s Katmai Peninsula to photograph bears, but other thoughts soon lurk in his mind: his life, family, and career, as well as the evolution of birds, geological processes, and how nature shaped our social system.
Click Here for More InformationSounds of the Wild Country
Horse Spring Coulee lies east of Loomis, Washington, in Okanogan County. The plateau is above Spectacle Lake, and during the Pleistocene, water was thought to have flowed down the coulee when ice blocked the valley below. The upper part of the coulee is covered in sagebrush and full of birds. This album is a collection of bird songs recorded there.
Go To Album Page for Streaming LinksRecent Publications:
HUMILITY IN TIME: THINKING LIKE A GLACIER IN SINLAHEKIN VALLEY
North, the hill plunges over 600 feet. South, it drops a similar elevation in increments. The hilltop is maybe a hundred feet wide, flat, and stretches a hundred yards or more perpendicular to the valley’s western wall before descending in stair steps to the creek running north. My mind tries to comprehend time and what has happened to sculpt the amazing configuration of this valley.
Read More & See More Photographs here
https://www.mountaineers.org/blog/humility-in-time-thinking-like-a-glacier-in-the-sinlahekin-valley
From: Mountaineer: Spring 2024 Volume 118: 28-31.
- Uganda: Malachite Kingfisher
The color ball shot along the watercourse, disappearing in the reeds. It was small, maybe baseball-sized. Our boatman slowed the wooden canoe to a crawl, and we drifted along the ten-foot-high papyrus … Read more - Uganda: Speckled Mousebird
In 1980, we organized a Birds of the World course while I was in graduate school. The goal was to survey birds’ taxonomic orders and families and learn about their ecology, behaviors, … Read more - When a Book Becomes RealLast week, I received an email from Washington State University Press telling me that Marvelous Wings had arrived from the printer. They were mailing my author copies the next day. I sat … Read more
- A Grand Ronde Feeder Dike
I had just turned off State Route 129 onto the small road running beside the river when I saw what I had come to find: a large, strange-looking basalt structure projecting from … Read more
Two young brown bears wrestle during a pause from fishing for salmon below Brooks Falls. 
The view from Washington Pass in the North Cascades of Washington. 
Short-billed Dowitchers rest at Bottle Beach, Grays Harbor, WA. A Black-bellied Plover walks in the background. 
Dunlin and Western Sandpipers feed at Bottle Beach, Grays Harbor, WA. 
An adult Common Loon brings a fish to its chick. Beaver Lake, Okanogan Highlands, WA. 
Brown bears fish for sockeye at Brooks Falls, Katmai National Park, Alaska.