Back to Yellowstone

If you've been following me for a while, you'll remember my trip to Yellowstone this past June.  After I came back, I started a new job, so I didn't have much time to really pour through the images from our three night camping adventure.  I'm off from work today, so this morning I took a second look at the images from America's megafauna capital.

A series of images of this bison scratching its head caught my eye, and I started to work on this particular shot in Adobe Camera Raw. After playing around with several different ways of cropping the image, I saw a little black speck perched upon the dead log.

Ah ha!  A brown-headed cowbird hiding out right next to a bison.  How cool is that?  If you've studied birding or ecology in north America, one of the biggest stories told in the field is the eastward migration of the cowbirds as America's forests were cleared. Adapted to range with the bison of the American plains, the cowbirds didn't have time to raise a nest full of young, so they somehow learned to lay their eggs in other birds nests.  Quite an interesting strategy for sure.  But as we opened up the forests, they started laying eggs in the nests of species that hadn't learned to recognize the cowbird eggs, and, to make  a long story short, we've got plenty of cowbirds around these days.

So although I've seen cowbirds here in Ohio a thousand times, seeing them in the open plains of Yellowstone National Park, sitting right next to a bison, leads me to respect this species just a little more.  They didn't clear the forests of the east- we did!

Slough Creek Valley, Yellowstone National Park, frequented by hundreds, if not thousands, of Bison.

Yellowstone Wildlife Megapost

As many of you know, I've recently had a big change in my life when it comes to what I do on a daily basis- I've moved offices and began a new position last week.  I'm getting settled in and adjusting to the new schedule.  I haven't gotten out much on my own time.   I also have so much material from Yellowstone it is unbelievable, but with this post, I'll wrap things up and bring this blog back to Ohio once again.  I hope you enjoy some of the cooler things we observed the first week of June 2010.

Cinnamon teal, Anas cyanoptera

Sage thrasher, Oreoscoptes montanus

 

Unknown raptor

Yellow-headed blackbird, Xanthocephalus xanthocephalus

Audubon's warbler, Dendroica auduboni, recently elevated to species rank once again.

Common raven, Corvus corax

And the Mammals

Uinta ground squirrel, Urocitellus armatus

Bighorn sheep, Ovis canadensis

Grizzly Bear, Ursus arctos horribilis

  

 American black bear, Ursus americanus 

Coyote, Canis latrans

and finally:

American badger, Taxidea taxus

And there you go, I hope you enjoyed my little adventure to Yellowstone as much as I did.

Tom

Yellowstone- Finishing Up Day #1

Male Ruddy Duck, Oxyura jamaicensis

Yellowstone National Park truly teems with wildlife in spring, which runs right into the middle of June.  When I was there just two weeks ago, I wore long underwear, hats, and gloves almost the entire time I was there.  Now that I'm back in Ohio where it is downright tropical, these photos are beginning to feel like distant memories.

Back to my"teeming with wildlife" quote. I'll quickly round out the first day for you. The ruddy duck and lesser scaup pair were hanging out with the sandhill cranes in floating island lake. 

Lesser Scaup, Aythya affinis

After floating island lake, we went to the Slough Creek campground, found a site, and set up camp.  High up and across Slough Creek, we saw this black bear moving quickly through a burned forest area.

After setting up camp, we headed to the Lamar Valley, famous for its wildlife, including wolves.  The expanse of the valley is immense.  The tiny brown dots around the river bank are American Bison.

American Bison, Bison bison

 Moose, Alces alces

Further up the valley, we got an excellent look at this female moose chewing on willow sprouts- Moose are huge- look how long those legs are.

 Finally, as evening faded, we spotted several wolves far across the valley.  The return of the wolf to Yellowstone has meant many things to many people.  To me, it was an amazing sight to watch wild wolves through binoculars and spotting scopes.  At times, it was just a wee bit scary to think that there wasn't any fence between me and these predators, even if they were 1000 yards away.

Gray Wolves, Canis lupis

Tom

The American Bison

Bison bison

Truly an American icon, it's hard to believe these creatures once roamed Ohio, but they did.

Tom

Sandhill Cranes

Sandhill crane pair with chicks, Grus canadensis.

So I've been holding onto the wildlife photos!  One of my regular blog readers has asked me several times something like "where are the animal pictures from Yellowstone!?"  I've been back a week, but the wildlife encounters we had were just amazingly spectacular and quite memorable.  I would say it was the experience of a lifetime, but I really hope I get to do this again some day.

During our first hour in the park, after a rather close siting of a black bear, we came across this pair of sandhill cranes.  They were nesting at floating island lake, which is along the grand loop road not too far east of Mammoth Hot Springs.  Many photographers were stopped along the road to photograph this rather rare site.  Wildlife photographer Jaun Pons, who has led many workshops in Yellowstone, traced our path a few days later, writing that he had never seen sandhill crane chicks in the park.  I definitely feel fortunate to watch and photograph these magnificent birds and their young.

Tom

Slough Creek & Sage

Although photographing the wildlife in Yellowstone National Park was exhilarating, the landscape opportunities may have excited me even more.  There is so much vast, natural space spread across the landscape that it doesn't take much work to find interesting compositions.  I could spend a lifetime capturing scenes like this one.  The sage prominently featured here is Atemisia tridentata, big sagebrush.  Each leaf ends in three round bumps or teeth- making the specific epithet tridentata quite a fitting name.  Big sagebrush was the dominant shrub species of the lower hills and valleys.  Viewed at close range, it gives a wonderful texture to the landscape, and from afar, it bathes the rolling hills in solid sage green.

Tom

Slough Creek Conifers, Firelight

Traveling always takes preparation and planning- then the trip happens, and I'm home now, and I think "what next".  Don't worry, I'll get back into the groove, but I just haven't found it yet.  Spending time away from Megan and Weston just makes me want to spend time with them-  They traveled to Maine while I was in Yellowstone.

 The trip was fantastic- we saw all the major wildlife species in Yellowstone.  We camped for three nights, and were in the park almost four full days searching for the various creatures that hang out in the park.  We spent most of our time in the Lamar Valley, the so-called American Serengeti.

The valley was absolutely teeming with megafauna- wolves, elk, bison, and pronghorn.  It was simply amazing, and I'll be sure to share these images with you.  I'm kicking around the idea of hosting yet another blog to feature my Yellowstone work- the animals and landscapes I captured there just don't fit the theme of "Ohio Nature" : ).

Here's an experimental image from our campground site at Slough Creek lit completely by firelight.  This image is a 85 second exposure- the camera was mounted on my tripod.  I say it's experiment because I didn't have the focus spot on and was just messing around.  It's just a little bit difficult to focus on something even manually when the scene looks pitch black through the viewfinder.

I find it fun to experiment and just play with the camera- Now that I know that this type of image is possible, the next time I have access to the light of a campfire, I'll get the focus and composition spot on.

Tom

The Lamar Valley

Yellowstone National Park

Back in Montana

I'm back in Livingston Montana after a three night visit to Yellowstone- it was amazing. Grizzly bears bounding down green hills, wolves ripping at carcasses, and bison just everywhere. Plus plenty of amazing birds too, like cinnamon teal, yellow headed blackbirds, and sage thrashers. I've heard the Lamar Valley be called America's Serengeti, and that simply is not an exaggeration. Tomorrow I head home.

Tom

If You Lived in Montana, This Could be the View Out Your Window

My great friend Bryan, who lives in Livingston, Montana, sent me these fantastic pictures that he took looking out his window. Bryan and I go way back to our days at Hiram College in Hiram, Ohio. We also spent three months photographing the wonders of Australia.

Bryan reports: "Here are some long-range shots from my upstairs window this evening (February 17)...at the high elevations, lots of snow last night, followed by lots of sun today. These are looking southeast from Livingston, the mountains are just inside the Absaroka-Beartooth Wilderness boundary. The first picture Livingston Peak, while the second shows the headwalls of a basin that you can hike into, about a 7 mile hike."
Aren't these stunning? I can only image what it would be like to have this view from my upstairs window. Bryan, you've done well. I think we're going to want to see more images like these!

Megan and I flew to Montana last July for Bryan's wedding. The flight wasn't cheap, but seeing Bryan in this wonderful place was worth every last penny. Coupling the joy of seeing a good friend for the first time in a long time, meeting each others life partners for the first time, and doing everything in such a beautiful place was a mind blowing experience. Here are more than a few shots from our trip to Montana and adjacent Wyoming. Megan and I are just hoping that Skybus starts flying to Bozeman!

We Are in Montana

Megan and I are in Montana! We are staying at a Ramada Inn in Bozeman. We arrived Tuesday evening after a smooth flight across the Rockies, after which we underwent a rapid descent down to the town of Bozeman. We woke up yesterday morning and went to Yellowstone National Park with our Friends James and Kathleen. The ninety mile drive down to Yellowstone was smooth and sunny, made especially nice by our free upgrade to our Ford Escape four wheel drive SUV. The sights, sounds, and smells of Yellowstone were even better than I remembered. Geyers, paintpots, mudpits, hot springs, and fumaroles were all spectacular. I just kept thinking I was in a huge fake mini golf course with rumbling volcanoes all over the place, but these were real. Real rumbling, real steam, real sulphuric smell pouring out of the ground. And the people! Old Faithful was packed, I would say at least 1000 people watched it explode with us right around 1:15 in the afternoon. Later in the day, we visited the thumb neck area, where geyers and Lake Yellowstone meet. Talk about a juxtoposition! The 45 degree water of the lake meets the thermal shores of geyserland. Needless to say, it was pretty cool, and hot, all at the same time. We finished off the day at Yellowstone Falls, headed then to the Roosevelt Lodge, and finally to Mammoth Springs where we exited the park. Along our way, snaking through mountains on a two lane road, we were treated to spectacular views of the Yellowstone valley below us. Stopped in every possible place were cars, on and off the road, with people peering over the cliff looking at bears and wolves in the valley below! We weren't able to see the momma grizzly bear with her two cubs, or the wolves, but we did see a moose with her baby, and also a full size brown bear. We also had a close encounter with two coyotes, and saw several hundred American bison. I also got two life birds, the raven, which are scavengers in the park like grackles back in Ohio, and two sandhill cranes, which Megan spotted in a lake that contained a floating Island. And wait, I forgot about the white Pelicans we saw in the rapids of the Yellowstone River. There were at least eight birds just hanging out, far away from the ocean, in this great river.