Tag: yellowstone wildlife

Coyote, Grizzly Bear, Other Bird, Pronghorn

My 10 Favorite Wildlife Photos of 2012

About a year ago I posted a blog with my 10 favorite wildlife photos from 2011.  Here are my 10 favorites for 2012.  Most of this year’s photos are from Yellowstone.

Photo of a female red fox with her kits.
Mom and the Kids

Finding and photographing this red fox vixen and her two kits was the best part of my trip to Yellowstone last spring.

Photo of red fox kits at play.
Fox Kits at Play

Baby animals are usually photogenic and these two certainly were.

Photo of pringhorn doe nursing her fawn.
Feeding Time

While on the subject of baby animals, this doe pronghorn kept her two fawns right around the Roosevelt Arch for a week or more.  They stopped a lot of cars.

Photo of a young grizzly bear.
A Grizzly Daydreams

This grizzly bear spent several days in May on the slopes above Yellowstone’s Soda Butte Creek feeding on grass, roots and whatever other vegetative material grizzlies feed on in the spring.

Photo of a grizzly bear.
Sad Looking Young Grizzly

I spent a fair amount of time photographing this bear.  It often looked sad to me.  I think it was a young bear and perhaps it was its first spring without its mother.

Photo of a mountain bluebird on a sage plant.
Mountain Bluebird on Sage

I always see mountain bluebirds in Yellowstone in the spring, but until this past May I’ve never really had any good opportunities to photograph them.  They seem to be constantly on the move.  This May was different.  They hung around.

Photo of a sandhill crane standing in a patch of sage.
A sandhill crane hunts in the sage.

There are always some sandhill cranes in Yellowstone in the nesting season.  They usually tend to be far off though.  You often hear them calling before you even spot them.  I was lucky here.

Photo of a male yellow-headed blackbird singing for a mate.
Love-sick Yellow-headed Blackbird, Yellowstone National Park

I don’t recall  ever having seen a yellow-headed blackbird in Yellowstone before this spring.  This male was singing to attract a mate I assume.  I spotted him while driving the road to the Slough Creek Campground.

Photo of white-crowned sparrow.
White-crowned Sparrow, Point Reyes National Seashore

There are a lot of white-crowned sparrows in Point Reyes National Seashore in the winter.  This male saved what was otherwise an uneventful day.

Coyote, Point Reyes National Seashore

Photo of a coyote staring at the camera.
Coyote Portrait

The coyotes I see in the ranching areas of Point Reyes are pretty wild.   By that I mean they don’t stick around when they see a human.  This individual was different.  He was comfortable with my photographing him.  He may have previously lived in an area with heavy human recreation use.

Point Reyes is my local Yellowstone.  It has a wide variety of wildlife considering where it is located.  No bison or moose, but it has elk and deer.  No wolves or bears, but it has coyotes, bobcats, badgers and one or more mountain lions.  You’ll see elk as easily as in Yellowstone and deer more easily.   You’ll see coyotes as easily as in Yellowstone and bobcats much more easily.

Well, that’s it.  My 10 favorites for 2012.  If you’d like to see my 10 favorites for 2011 click here.

Other Mammal

Yellow-bellied Marmots, Yellowstone National Park

Photo of yellow-bellied marmot.
On the Look-out

Yellow-bellied marmots are one of the largest rodents in Yellowstone.  They are about 20 t0 28 inches in length and weigh from 3.5 to 11 pounds.  They are found at all elevations in the park and hibernate for up to eight months a year at the higher elevations.

Photo of a Marmot.
Always Looking for Enemies

A colony consists of one male, several females and young of the year.  They breed shortly after emerging from hibernation.  Their calls include a loud whistle and a scream when predators are nearby.  They are preyed upon by eagles, coyotes and grizzlies.  The preceding info is based on the Park Service’s 2005 edition of “Yellowstone Resources & Issues.”

Photo of a marmot at Sedge Bay.
Marmot near Sedge Bay

Marmots can be found throughout the park.  Look for rocky areas with grass nearby.  One good spot is the rock outcropping across from the Sedge Bay picnic area.  A couple of years ago I was photographing them there when they started screaming about something behind them.  They were a little above me so I couldn’t see what they were agitated about.  They took cover in the rocks.  I picked up my gear and turned to go back to my truck which was parked on the road’s shoulder about 50 feet away.  As I did so a black wolf disappeared into some cover about 40 feet from me.  He had apparently walked between me and my truck.  A guy pulled up and asked if I saw the white wolf above the rock outcropping.  That was the wolf the marmots were screaming about.  I said “no,” but I spotted it shortly thereafter.  It was going in the opposite direction of the black wolf.  For a link to that blog click here.

Rocky Mountain Elk

Nervous Cow Elk, Yellowstone National Park

Photo of a cow elk.
“Nervous Nellie”

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.

Photo of underexposed elk.
Backlit Cow Elk

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.)

Red Fox

Red Fox Vixen and Kits, Yellowstone National Park

Photo of a female red fox with her kits.
Mom and the Kids

I almost always see red foxes in Yellowstone, but I’ve never gotten a good photo of one until this year.  When it rains it pours.  This year I saw and photographed several, including this vixen and her two kits.

I’ve read that red foxes usually produce four to seven kits.  Thus, these two may be what’s left of a larger litter.   I was fortunate to be able to observe them for a while.  One kit was very outgoing and the other was very shy.

Seeing baby animals is why I like to visit Yellowstone in the spring.  Bear cubs and bison calves will be the first thing you’ll see in May.  Elk calves, bighorn lambs and pronghorn fawns start to appear the first week in June.  Deer fawns appear later in June.

Photo of a gray fox.
Gray Fox or Red Fox?

I was looking at some of my fox photos from the trip and this one looked different.  I just did some checking and now realize this fox seems to be a gray fox.  Red foxes have very distinctive black stockings. This one doesn’t have them.    Plus its trunk is mostly gray.

Coyote

Wet Coyote, Yellowstone National Park

Photo of a wet coyote.
Wet Coyote

The snow that fell yesterday was sticking when it landed on vegetation, but not on the roads or animals.  This coyote was probably hoping it would either get colder or warmer.  It looks soaked.  The temperature ranged between 30 and 35 degrees.  It’s about the same today.  There was about four inches of snow on my car this morning and it was still snowing.  Fortunately, it’s let up, at least for now.

Badger

Badger Cubs at Play

Photo of two badger cubs.
Three Badger Cubs at Play, Yellowstone National Park

I checked this badger den for the better part of two weeks in May of 2009.  For a couple of days one of the cubs was often seen with this bit of fur or skin in its mouth.  I don’t think I ever saw them more than about 10 feet from the mouth of the den.  Yet, a coyote managed to capture and kill one of the cubs.  I don’t think they had learned to fear anything up to that point.  Some of life’s lessons come at a steep price.