This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
This site is dedicated to wildlife and landscape photography.
A gray wolf crossing a creek in Yellowstone.
This wolf had been feeding on an elk carcass in this Yellowstone meadow for a few days. Note the full belly. During that period I never saw another wolf or bear at the site.
This calf was seen very close to the road just north of Yellowstone National Park. For the first couple of weeks after birth elk calves stay hidden like this for much of the time. If they don’t move they are hard to spot. Grizzlies are known to run grid patterns through elk calving grounds until one panics and tries to run.
This bison calf looks like it is smiling as it runs off some pent-up energy. Bison are the first of the ungulates to give birth in Yellowstone. Bison management in Yellowstone is difficult and controversial. Some of them migrate north out of the park in winter looking for forage. That puts ts them in the crosshairs of the State of Montana which feels the brucellosis some of them carry will infect livestock. The most common management solution is to shoot them.
Here is another photo from our garden. I decided to do a poster series of birds like I did last summer of Yellowstone wildlife. The Yellowstone posters are available at The Paradise Gallery in Gardiner, Montana. The bird posters are now available at Wild Birds Unlimited, Novato, California. I had never been in a Wild Birds Unlimited store before the Novato store opened this past summer. It is very nice and the people are very knowledgeable. If you’re interested in attracting and feeding wild birds and there is a Wild Birds Unlimited store near you, then you probably already know how good they are. But, if you have one nearby and haven’t checked it out, you should.
Have you ever seen something in nature that struck you as odd? In May of 2009 I saw something that I thought was very odd. I was driving into Yellowstone’s Lamar Valley from the west and off to my right not far from the Lamar River I saw a large nest atop a dead tree. My first thought was that it was probably an osprey nest or maybe a bald eagle nest. I slowed down and pulled over. I could see there was something in the nest, but it was too far to see what it was exactly. I decided to grab my big lens and tripod and hike closer to the nest. After a bit I stopped. I couldn’t believe my eyes. It looked like a Canada goose. I looked through my lens. It was a Canada goose.
This was a new one for me. Canada geese nest on the ground, usually in wetlands. What was this one doing up in a raptor’s nest? Maybe it had learned the hard way that eggs laid on the ground in the Lamar Valley don’t last long. I checked every day for over a week and there was always a goose in the nest. There had to be eggs there. Will the eggs fare better in a raptor’s nest at the top of a tall tree? Maybe. Maybe not. Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, Canada geese don’t feed their young like birds of prey do. The goslings will have to get down to the ground and to the river soon after they hatch. I know some waterfowl species like wood ducks nest in tree cavities and the young drop down to the ground, but this is a very tall tree and the branches extend well away from the trunk, especially in the lower portion of the tree outside the framing of the image. Finally, how will they walk across all those branches with their webbed feet?
When I returned to Yellowstone in May of this year I looked to the nest as I entered Lamar Valley. There was a bird in it again. This time it was an osprey.
I’ve often wondered what happened to the offspring of the Canada geese. Did the eggs survive to hatching? If so, did the goslings make it safely down the tree and to the river? I guess I’ll never know.
In my last post about baby bison I said that seeing and photographing them gave me a new appreciation of the adults. But for that I might not have stopped to watch and photograph this cow bison as she grazed on the succulent grasses in this pond. I wonder what the starlings are saying?
Bison sometimes get into trouble when they enter the waters of Yellowstone. Not far from this tiny pond is Blacktail Pond. At the time I took this photo (May 2010) there were two bison carcasses in Blacktail. I’m not sure how they got in there, but once they got in they were in trouble. Blacktail is much deeper than this little pond and it has very steep banks. Because of its body shape, I think a bison would have a tougher time getting out of Blacktail Pond than any other species of Yellowstone. Their deaths, however, provided needed protein for several predators this spring. I saw grizzlies, wolves, bald eagles, ravens and at least one coyote feed on those carcasses.
