Elk Calf, Yellowstone National Park
Here’s another elk calf too young to keep up with its mom. It’s better hidden than the last elk calf photo I posted. It’s not likely to move a muscle until its mom returns to nurse it and move it.
Category: Rocky Mountain Elk
Elk Calf, Yellowstone National Park
An elk calf looks at the camera.
My favorite time of year to be in Yellowstone is now. To be more specific, I like to be there from mid May to mid June. The main reason, of course, is all the baby animals. But that’s not all. The colors are fantastic then also. Yes, the crowds can be frustrating. I remember going there in the early 1970’s to photograph wildlife and I never saw another serious photographer. Really.
I didn’t go this year and I really miss it.
Elk Calf, Yellowstone National Park
Newborn Elk Calf along the Madison River
I apologize to those who have followed my blog for not having posted anything for many months. I’m back and one thing I did during the interim was build a new website (and get rid of two former websites). Hopefully, I’ve done what it takes for everyone to find this site. Another thing I did in the interim was go through old images, like this photo of an elk calf, which I photographed in 2014. When I look at old photos I don’t remember much about some, but others I remember very well. That’s true with the images of this elk calf.
It was mid-June in Yellowstone and I was driving along the Madison River looking for animals to photograph, especially baby animals. I don’t regularly drive along the Madison because I don’t have much luck there. That’s partly because the elk herd in the Firehole/Madison area numbers less than 100 animals. It’s the only elk herd that stays in the park in the winter and that takes its toll. The animals are also affected by high fluoride and silica levels in the plants and water which wear their teeth out prematurely. They live about five years less than elk in the rest of the park, according the the Park Service.
Anyway, it was getting late when I spotted a cow elk with this very small calf. Another photographer was already there and he told me he saw the mother give birth that morning. He added that a pair of coyotes had made an attempt to get the calf, but the mother had held them off. I stayed until I couldn’t see and took this photo well after sunset. By that time I had developed some connection to the calf and its mother and I decided that even though it was far from where I was staying I would get there by first light the next morning to see if the little one made it through the night. I got there by first light, but there was no sign of the calf or its mother. I hope it made it.
Nervous Cow Elk, Yellowstone National Park
As I was driving from Mammoth to Tower shortly after sunrise one morning I spotted this lone cow elk looking at me. She seemed very nervous. She looks like she may be pregnant and I assume she was close to giving birth. When cow elk are close to giving birth they go off by themselves for the birthing. The calf is kept hidden for about a week. The cow moves her calf (or calves) several times a day during that seven days and they stay motionless until their mom comes back to feed and move them. Even so, predators find a lot of them.
The lighting was very bad for this photo. You can see from the rim lighting around the elk’s body that the sun was coming from behind it. The number one rule in outdoor photography is keep the sun at your back. Well, you can’t always follow the rules in wildlife photography. Elk aren’t models you can move around. I did what I could at the time which was to compensate some by overexposing a bit and then compensated some more in Photoshop. In the film days one could do, or attempt to do, the same thing in printing by dodging and burning, but the methods then were somewhat crude compared to what Photoshop allows one to do to mitigate exposure problems. In this case I used the adjustment brush in Adobe Camera Raw to lighten the face and neck and then further refined the lighting/exposure using Shadows/Highlights and Curves.
Here is what the image would have looked like, but for the adjustments described above in camera and Photoshop. (The other difference from the top image is that I didn’t bother to crop this image.)
Big Bull Elk, Yellowstone National Park
This is the largest bull elk I saw this fall in Yellowstone. He and his harem were located south of Swan Lake. There seems to be something wrong with his right eye. He may be blind in that eye. Bulls suffer many injuries during the rut. This past fall I saw several bulls limping due to shoulder injuries. One Yellowstone bull was famous for attacking cars. He was know by his ear tag as #6. For more about him and his demise click here.
I mentioned in an earlier blog post that the rut seemed slow to me this past September in Yellowstone and wondered if it was due to weather that seemed warmer than usual for that time of year. There may have been other factors. I just found an article in the Huffington Post from last January that reported that the Yellowstone herd was down about 25% from the previous year due to several possible factors, including weather, increased hunting success due to November snow storms that pushed more elk than usual out of the park during the hunting season, and wolves. Less accurate counting may have also been a factor.
Speaking of elk, I just finished upgrading the Rocky Mountain Elk Portfolio on my website. You can see that portfolio here.
A Bull Elk Bugles, Yellowstone National Park
This bull and his small harem were on the far side of the Madison River near the Madison campground every night in mid September. Around sunrise each day they would cross the river and then the road and head up the ridge across from the river. They attracted quite a crowd each morning.
Cow Elk, Yellowstone National Park
This cow was part of a harem of about 10 cows and calves just north of Mammoth. The photo was taken shortly before sunset.
