Yellowstone Part 2

With the weekend over the weather in Yellowstone began to change. We woke up Monday morning to cloudy skies but as we headed into the park some of the clouds began to break up allowing hints of blue skies to peak through.

We were hoping to see some more grizzly bears so we decided to head over to the area around Fishing Bridge and Yellowstone Lake. After checking on the bison carcass in the Yellowstone River where we had photographed the bear the day before and stopping for a bathroom break at the fishing bridge we headed out towards the east entrance to the park.
The east entrance was closed, because of the possibility of an avalanche, so we decided to hang out at Sedge Bay and see if any of the grizzlies that had been seen in the area would show up. We did not see any grizzly but while we waited we were treated to a little show by the marmots living in the rocks. There were also waterfowl down on the lake to photograph, most of which were Barrow's goldeneye.
After a while I got bored of waiting for grizzly so we went back to Fishing Bridge to eat some lunch and then headed around the northern loop of the park. When we got to Mammoth we stopped for a bit to photograph the wildlife in town. Michelle took a few pics of the resident elk herd while I focused more on photographing the mockingbirds and the mountain bluebird, pictured above.

We spent the remainder of the day out at the Tower Junction and Lamar Valley. We did see one grizzly, from quite a ways away, but mostly we photographed ungulates like bison, and their calves, bull elk and pronghorn antelope, and then headed through the park back to West Yellowstone where we were staying.The next morning the weather was even worse. Since we knew that it would be difficult to photograph in the weather we took our time getting going and hung around the hotel for a while. When we finally headed into the park we found that the weather was making it difficult to drive. In most places it was sleeting and raining but around the lake it was even worse with fog often obscuring the road.
We did find a few things to photograph, though the lighting did not make for the best pictures. This male American kestrel was perched on the side of the road near the lake eating some type of rodent in the snow. I guess he did not mind frozen food. We, on the other hand were looking for something warm to eat so we headed over to Fishing Bridge for some lunch.

At lunch we found out that a mother grizzly and cub, which had been spotted at Pelican Creek a few days earlier, had spent most of Monday out by the Lake Lodge just a few miles away from Fishing Bridge. So we decided to head over and look for her since we would have loved to get some shots of a tiny grizzly cub. We never were able to find her, but on our way back from Lake we spotted this beautiful coyote. This was one of several coyotes that we spotted on the trip but it was one of the most attractive coyotes that I have ever seen, with the light color and clean coat.
The bad weather continued on through out the day. It was the only day in the whole week were we did not really see the sun at any time. So we decided to head out of the park early and catch a nice dinner. On our way out we did spot this sandhill crane doing its best to stand up straight in the snow and the biting wind.