Tag: swan lake flat

Mountain Goat

Mountain Goats, Yellowstone

Photo Mountain Goats Yellowstone

A nanny goat and her kid rest in the Hoodoos Area of Yellowstone.

It’s not easy to see mountain goats in Yellowstone.  There is a viewing location in the northeast part of the park on the road to Cooke City.  Look for the sign that says Barronette Peak.  But the goats are quite a distance away for viewing, even if you have a spotting scope.   Occasionally they show up in the Golden Gate Area which is the Gardner River Canyon you drive through before topping out at Swan Lake Flat.  The area is also called the Hoodoo Area.  Both names refer to the color of the rocks.  I saw these mountain goats in the canyon early one morning.  I posted an earlier article about a billy goat in the same area.

The Park Service says mountain goats are not native to Yellowstone, but the result of the introduction of mountain goats for hunting by the State of Montana in the 1940s and 1950s.  Apparently, they were released not that far from the northern portion of Yellowstone and they became established in the northern portions of the park in the 1990s.  The Park Service also says they may be having a negative effect on bighorn sheep by competing for food.  The Park Service is doing research now with other agencies on mountain goat ecology and to determine the effect of the goats on bighorn sheep.  Here’s a video about the harm caused by Yellowstone mountain goats.

The Park Service uses the time period of when European man arrived in North America as a goal, time-wise, for protecting, preserving and restoring our national parks.  The Park Service is saying the goats weren’t there then.  I don’t have any problem with the Park Service’s idea of striving for conditions like those that existed when European man arrived in this country.  In fact, I totally support that policy.  But the goats are native to parts of the western United States.  What if the goats were in the Yellowstone area 10,000 or 100,000 years ago?  Would the policy still say they aren’t native?  I don’t know, but I would support treating the goats as native in that case.

Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear, Yellowstone National Park

A mother grizzly bear walks through the south end of Swan Lake Flat.
A mother grizzly walks through sage.

A well-known place in Yellowstone to look for grizzlies is a large open area called Swan Lake Flat.  It is especially good for seeing grizzly sows with cubs.  I have often seen grizzlies there, but they have always been too far away for good photos.

In May 2015 I got lucky.  I was approaching the flat from the south when I saw a flash of brown out of the corner of my eye.  I stopped and saw a mother grizzly with two two year old cubs walking parallel to the road about 75 yards away.   Unfortunately, they were heading in the opposite direction.  By the time I got the car turned around they had disappeared into some trees.  I drove to a spot that looked like it would be a good place to wait for them and got ready.

As luck would have it, after a minute or two I noticed that there was a very young elk calf between me and where I hoped the bears would pass.  It was standing in a little clump of trees.  Hmm.  Bears love elk calves.  In fact, grizzlies and black bears kill about 50% of the calf crop each year.  What if they see/smell the calf and charge toward it (and me)?  That’s as far as I got in my thinking when the bears came into view.  They didn’t detect the calf and kept going.  The calf got to live another day and I got my photo.

 

Other Mammal

Mountain Goat, Yellowstone National Park

Photo of mountain goat.
Billy Goat, Golden Gate Area

I haven’t been blogging much in the past year.  There have been two reasons.  The first reason was the constant theft of my images. The second reason was that I was growing a bit tired of feeling pressured to post something on a regular basis.  So, I let things slide.  I did go back and put a big copyright symbol on the photos that I had previously posted, but that didn’t leave me feeling all that satisfied about the theft problem because the big copyright symbol made the photos look pretty bad.  I’ve changed that to what you see here.  Maybe I’ll be more happy with this copyright style as time goes by.  I say “as time goes by” because I’m feeling a little more enthused about getting back to blogging.

One reason I’m enthused is that I just spent a month in Yellowstone.  Spring is my favorite time there because of all the baby animals.  I think this was the most successful spring trip I’ve had there.  One of the high points was seeing mountain goats in an area where I had never seen them before, and, more important, at distances that made photographing them feasible.  The area I’m speaking of is the Golden Gate.  It’s called the Golden Gate because of the color of the rocks.  If you aren’t familiar with where the Golden Gate is, it’s the canyon area you drive through just before you reach Swan Lake Flat (when driving from Mammoth).

I saw and photographed a nice looking (full winter coat) nanny and her kid on two different days and then this billy at a later time.  Telling mountain goat males from females is not all that easy.  The horns are a way to identify male from females, but with goats it’s not real easy because there’s not a big difference in size between the horns of a billy and a nanny.  The horns of billy goats are much thicker at the base and more curved than are the horns of nannies and, in frontal views, the horns look like they are spaced very close together with the males.

Photo of a billy (male) mountain goat.
Billy or Nanny?

The males also have a shoulder hump.  Based on the thickness of the horns at the base, the curve of the horns and the shoulder hump, I think this is a billy.  He is also in the early stages of molting.  He will soon have a much shorter summer coat.  One of the things I like about mountain goats is that they often assume stances as though they’ve been posed by the photographer.

The Park Service says mountain goats are not native to Yellowstone, but the result of the introduction of mountain goats by the State of Montana in the 1940s and 1950s which became established in the northern portions of the park in the 1990s.  The Park Service also says they may be having a negative effect on bighorn sheep.  The Park Service is doing research now with other agencies on mountain goat ecology and to determine the effect of the goats on bighorn sheep.

Uncategorized

Lions, Tigers, and Bears, Oh My!

Well, the title is a stretch, but I did see and photograph this grizzly bear.  I started the day by going all the way to the east entrance and then driving 10 miles down Eagle Creek searching for grizzlies.  No luck.  At the end of the day I saw this grizzly at Swan Lake Flat.

I also photographed bighorns in Gardner Canyon, mule deer between Mammoth and Gardiner and bison in the Madison River drainage.  All in all, a good day.