Soggy Coyote

Calendar Canids

 Our trip to Yellowstone last spring turned out to be a good one. We usually go at the end of May and in years that we have a late winter, like last year, we usually have a pretty good year photographing in the park. Maybe it is because in years where there is a late winter the mountains still have a lot of snow so the animals head down to the lower elevations of the park which are conveniently close to the roads.

We had the opportunity to photograph all three types of Canidae that can be found in the park. Two of these species made it into the 2012 calendar. Coyotes are fairly common in the park and usually not too difficult to see but the coyote in the first photo was one of the best looking coyotes that I have ever seen. We also managed to photograph several different wolves. I featured this wolf a couple of weeks ago to help bring some attention to the plight of wolves now that many have been delisted from the endangered species act. If you care about wolves and our environment you might want to take another look.

Which is the Beast?

I am not a big sports fan but I do like to watch a little bit of football. So the other day when I was on my way home from The Raptor Center I flipped my radio over to one of the local sports station to see what was happening in the NFL. Even though I live in Minnesota I am not at all a fan of the Minnesota Vikings. Having lived in Mankato, MN, home of the Vikings training camp, for a couple of years while I was going to school I got to see first hand how many of the Vikings players where complete assholes. Now the players may have changed since the many years ago that I went to school but sex boat cruises, drunk driving arrests and guys who beat their wives over the years have done little to change my mind about the home team. On this particular evening one of the Vikings leading defensive players, Jared Allen, was being interviewed by a local radio host. Since Mr Allen did not want to talk about their last game, they lost 45 to 7, the conversation instead turned to the hunting trip that several players had taken over their bye week. The host then asked about the most unusual prey that Mr Allen had ever hunted in his life. The jerk went on to tell the host that he had hunted coyotes using hand guns from the back of a snow mobile. He explained how groups of his friends had joined him hunting coyotes by his farm. They would run over the coyotes with their snowmobiles first then they would come back and shoot them. He laughed and said that it was really cool. The live audience, I think they were broadcasting from a Twin Cities sports bar, gave him a cool response and he did not seem to appreciate that what he had done was completely despicable. Michael Vick went to jail, lost his contract and most of his endorsements because of his cruelty to dogs. I think that what this #@#@#@#@!!! did is just as bad. Maybe one of the animal rights organizations will protest against the Vikings until they get rid of this worthless jerk.

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.

Yellowstone Coyotes

Yellowstone is home to 3 members of the canine family, the wolf , coyote and fox. The coyote has adapted well to living around civilization, which has helped the coyote population, through out North America, to increase. In Yellowstone, however, the coyote population has been decreasing as the wolf packs have become stronger and their numbers greater. Because they are competing for prey the wolves will often kill the coyotes. As the coyote numbers decrease the numbers of fox increase, since coyotes view the fox as competition and will often kill them while wolves do not compete directly with the much smaller fox. Most of the coyotes that we saw this year were near Canyon Village. However we did see a few, like the one pictured above, out in the Lamar Valley. The Lamar and Tower areas of the park had very little snow left.

Over by Canyon Village and Hayden Valley the snow was quite a bit deeper.

We spotted this coyote coming down the side of the road that lead into Canyon Village.
When it got to the end of the road it began to run in a circle around a pair of boulders. It was chasing some prey, probably a unita ground squirrel or a chipmunk, but I could not see what it was.
On this occasion the prey escaped. I was disappointed, I would have loved to get a pic of the coyote catching its prey, but I am sure that the coyote was more disappointed and probably hungrier too.

Yellowstone day 5: More dog days of Yellowstone.

Thursday morning we decided to head off to the coyote den right away in the morning. On the way there we saw this bull elk resting at the side of a creek. I guess sometimes even the elk find it hard to get up and get going in the morning. Prolly did not get his morning coffee yet.

When we got to the coyote den we found that there was an adult with the pups. One of the people who had been watching the den for days told us that this was a female from a previous litter who was still living with the parents. This was a behavior that I had never seen before. I am sure that it was difficult for the parents having another mouth to feed as well as all the puppies but it did give them a built in babysitter. Sometimes though it is not so much fun taking care of the kids when you are a teenager.

But a little puppy love makes things all better.
Mom did come back while we watched with some breakfast.
A bit of protein does a puppy body good.
I can't believe I ate the whole thing! I think that I m going into food coma.

After a few hours, and another 8gb worth of used CF card, the adults left to hunt some more and the puppies settled down to sleep. It was getting around lunch time so we headed to Tower to eat our lunch. After eating we headed out to Lamar Valley. In Lamar we photographed a male pronghorn resting as well as an active osprey nest. On our way out of Lamar we spotted a big horned ram on a hill over looking the road. This is likely the same ram that we had photographed earlier in the week.
We made a stop back in tower where we saw a couple of mule dear.
Then we decided that we would go back to the coyote den and photograph some more puppies. On the way back we spotted a yellow bellied marmot, sometimes called a woodchuck, on the side of the road.
When we got back to the interpretive trail where the den was we saw that the parking lot was almost empty. I went back to the back of the boardwalk to set up but their were no coyotes visible. One of the other visitors there told me that someone had tried to get too close and the coyotes had moved the den. I have done a lot of crazy things to get a good shot, but forcing an animal to move it's home and family to get a picture is just plain wrong.