Month: February 2024

After almost four months, I am finally starting to settle into my new home. Travel for photography and home maintenance issues have kept me from focusing on what’s going on in my own backyard. I have finally added a hummingbird feeder to the backyard and its contents are rapidly disappearing so the local hummers have discovered it. Besides hummers, my backyard birds include Dark-eyed Juncos and White-crowned Sparrows. This is a female White-crowned Sparrow. And, no, I didn’t hold the camera crooked when I took this shot. That section of fence is angled up an incline in the backyard, although about half of the back fence blew down in the 60 plus mile per hour winds we had over the weekend. As I mentioned, home maintenance issues are keeping me busy and keeping me from focusing on photography. It was nice to relax and take a few shots yesterday.

According to the National Park Service, the best time to see Trumpeter Swans in Yellowstone is winter. These graceful birds mate for life and we watched as a pair paddled slowly up and down an area of the Yellowstone River a couple of weeks ago. The Trumpeter Swan is North America’s largest native waterfowl with a wingspan up to eight feet. Once abundant, their numbers declined drastically by the 1930’s due to habitat loss and hunting. Conservation efforts helped increase the numbers in the lower 48 states and Trumpeter Swans are increasing in the Rocky Mountains, and are stable in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, but as of 2022, they are declining in Yellowstone National Park. We were lucky to see and photograph them.

The Gray Wolves we encountered in Yellowstone National Park a couple of weeks ago had one thing on their mind…the bull Bison carcass half submerged in the Firehole River a couple hundred yards away. This Wolf had been resting on the hillside above the river probably after eating its fill earlier. When it decided to return to the carcass to feast again, his haunches, legs, neck and even the tip of his nose were crusted with the snow he’d been resting in. He walked with purpose across the snow covered road, ignoring the photographers and gawkers along the way, eyes focused on the prize in the distance. How handsome he is.

It’s hard to describe the awe I felt in Yellowstone a couple of weeks ago. We had encountered several members from a pack of Gray Wolves near a kill they had made on the edge of the Firehole River. We watched them feeding on the carcass that was partially submerged. When they were sated, they casually strolled up the bank, across the road in front of us and up the hillside. As we stood in front of our Snow Coach, Wolves suddenly appeared on the hillside next to us. Their howling gave me goosebumps as the Wolves on the hillside listened to their pack mates calling from the distance. What a privilege it was to witness. On my many visits to Yellowstone in recent years, I have heard and even seen Wolves often. Most of the time, the Wolves have been so far away they were barely visible to the naked eye and even with the reach of a 600mm or 800mm lens, they were still microdots on the landscape so there was no photograph there. On this day, however, there was no question that we were photographing Wolves.

There didn’t seem to be the usual large herds of Bison in Yellowstone National Park week before last. We saw some Bison but because of the warmer than usual temperatures, those we did see didn’t have the thick coat of ice on their faces, something we call “crusties” and something that we always hope to see when we photograph Bison in winter. This bull Bison just had a few snow flakes sprinkled on his head and a slight coating of frost on his back as he munched on grass at the edge of a creek.

I never tire of this view from Artist Point looking at the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone, especially in winter when snow covers much of the intense color of the canyon, and the focus is on the Yellowstone River thundering over the Lower Falls and cascading down, with ice formations surrounding it. It is no wonder that the teamwork of artist Thomas Moran and photographer William Henry Jackson and their images created during the Hayden Expedition in 1871, helped convince Congress that Yellowstone should be protected as this country’s first national park.

“Me and my shadow, strolling down the avenue.” Written almost 100 years ago, the Al Jolson, Dave Dreyer, Billy Rose song “Me and My Shadow” is still relevant to this day, even in Yellowstone National Park where a week ago, a lone Coyote, along with its shadow, strolled toward me on a groomed road.

He took a look back with his piercing yellow eyes and then he disappeared into the woods behind him. He was a Gray Wolf (I used the pronoun “he” but the sex was unknown) in Yellowstone National Park. We were so lucky on our first morning there last week to see wolves. It turned out to be a dog dominant week there between daily sightings of both Gray Wolves and Coyotes. Wolves from the Wapiti Lake Pack, or it could have been the Firehole River Pack (we heard reports that either pack might have done it) took down a bull Bison on the edge of the Firehole River a day or two before we arrived. Wolves, Coyotes, Common Ravens, Bald Eagles, and others we did not witness, fed on the carcass the entire week we were there until just the cape, skull, and a few bones, by now dragged across the river to the opposite shore, remained.

There is something decidedly otherworldly about Roaring Mountain in Yellowstone National Park. The fumaroles spew hydrogen sulfide and sulfur gases that fill the air with noxious smelling fumes. Nevertheless, the hissing sounds of the escaping steam and the ebb and flow of the resulting mist that waft over the stark mountain are captivating despite its alien appearance.