Yellowstone- Wildlife Watching (06-23-12)

    There are several ways of finding wildlife to watch and photograph in Yellowstone National Park.  The easiest, and definitely the laziest, is to do a “drive by”. You can literally snap pictures as you happen to drive by the animals.  I took these photos as we were driving by:

Of course, the odds of the picture looking good are pretty slim, and you aren’t really spending any time observing the animal, so other methods are usually better.

The most popular method is one that involves 3 steps.  The first step is to find a stretch of road that has an unusual amount of cars (at least some of which appear to be on the side of the road).  Once that is found, then you have to ask yourself several questions.  First- are the cars strewn around in a haphazard fashion, as if they were parked in a rush (or not parked at all), or are they all carefully parked in actual parking spaces.  If the latter is true, move on.  There is no wildlife to see here.  If they are strewn around, the next step is to see if all of the scopes, binoculars, and cameras are all facing the same direction.  If they aren’t- move along-no one knows what they are supposed to be looking at. Many times one person will stop to look at something, and others will soon stop to see what’s up.  Pretty soon everyone is frantically looking around to see what the original person is looking at. It’s probably a flower or a tree stump that resembles a bear. However, If all the viewing apparatuses are facing the same direction, the next thing to do is to determine if everyone looks beside themselves with excitement.  If they don’t- move along- it’s probably Canadian Geese or Bison.  However, if everyone looks like they can barely contain themselves- PULL OVER!  Of course, that’s not easy to do in a huge honking truck like we have. This afternoon we came across a huge “bear jam” of cars and it turns out a grizzly bear was meandering in the meadow:

 

An easy, but largely hit or miss way of watching for wildlife is to “watch” for wildlife.  This involves constantly scanning your eyes around, everywhere you happen to be, in the hopes of seeing an animal.  That’s how I saw this wolf:  Unfortunately she was trotting across a small clearing, so it was difficult to get any photo at all, never mind a good one!





Another hit or miss method is to hike into the wilderness, away from crowds, in areas that have signs posted such as “CAUTION: GRIZZLY HABITAT”.  The problem with this method is that sure, you want a picture of a grizzly, but not as he is about to open his mouth to take a bite out of you. I did, however, take these photos while hiking on a trail:

 
That Elk really didn’t care that we were hiking on a trail about 50 feet away from him. Every once in a while he would lift his head as if he were posing for pictures.
The most time consuming method of observing wildlife is to actually get up (horror of horrors) at the crack of dawn and drive over an hour to get to a place where the animals hang out first thing in the morning. Wild animals are most active around dawn and dusk, and wolves in particular, are most active just after dawn.

So, yesterday we got up really early, packed breakfast and lunch into the cooler, grabbed a cup of coffee and headed out to Lamar Valley where a pack of wolves has their den. 
The drive to the valley was beautiful and eerie, with a layer of fog and steam rising into the cold morning air:

There were more Bison than cars on the roads:
We weren’t sure exactly where in Lamar Valley we were supposed to look for the wolves, but we were hoping that the most popular method (see above) would help us figure out where to look.  As it turned out, we came across a group of people with large scopes, all hanging out in the same area.  We parked the truck and figured we were in a good spot when we saw that someone’s truck had a license plate that read: YNP WOLF.  Sure enough, these people even had walkie talkies so they could compare notes with another group further up the road.
Within minutes of being there we had the privilege of hearing what a howling pack of wolves sounds like.  Not just once, but several times. The sound came from the nearby hills, and echoed down into the valley.  It was….amazing.  The “pros” with the scopes were catching glimpses of wolves moving in the hills, but none of them stayed out in the open long enough for others to see them.  And then Paul says “hey, what’s that over there?” and he points in the complete opposite direction from where everyone else was looking.  There, across stream and in the distant meadow, was a lone wolf.  We watched her walk across the field for about 15 minutes, as she looked for breakfast.  She finally disappeared into the tall brush.
There was something incredibly special about the entire experience.  Not just the wolves-although that was the highlight, but just being out and about early in the day when the animals are at their most active.  The amount of wildlife we saw today was amazing- 2 herds of elk, a wolf, a grizzly bear, thousands of bison, Pronghorn antelope, mountain goats and bighorn sheep.
One comment about the pictures.  In many of them, the animals are far away.  If you try to enlarge the picture, you’ll lose the clarity, because the animals were actually SO far away (except the bison and the elk) that I am surprised I was able to get anything recognizable at all. Add to that the fact that I didn’t have a tripod, and I really feel lucky. To give you an idea- although the wolf isn’t in the shot below- she was walking on the other side of the stream, just below where the hill starts to go up.  You can see that in the first picture of her.
  Many people use a scope-more powerful than binoculars- to watch and photograph wildlife.  Paul and I are just using the two pairs of binoculars we brought with us.  A scope needs to be on a tripod to be effective and we just wouldn’t use it often enough.   Today the “pros” let everyone look through their scopes at the wolf- they let Paul go first, since he “found” her.