Grizzly Bear

 The grizzly bear is the largest predator in North America. Males can get up to 1200 lbs or more. They are omnivores eating a diet of fruits, berries, nuts, seeds, grasses, rodents, fish and larger mammals. During the fall they go into hyperphagia in preparation for hibernation. During hypephagia the bear do little else other then eat and sleep. An adult bear can put on up to 400 extra pounds during this time, which is important because they do not eat during the 5 - 7 months that they hibernate.

Grizzly bears are related to brown bears or Europe and Asia. It is believed that they traveled to North America across the Bearing Strait around 50,000 years ago. When European settlers came to North America Grizzly bears were found through out much of the western half of the continent. Unfortunately because of hunting and habitat loss the grizzly bear has been extirpated from over half of it's original range. The largest concentration of grizzly bears is in Alaska where they estimate the population at around 30,000 bears. The population in Canada is estimated at between 15,000 to 20,000. In the continental U.S. the population is only about 1500. Most of the bears in the lower 48 states of the U.S. live in Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. With the majority of them living in Yellowstone National Park, where we photographed these, and the Grand Tetons.

Part of the problem with the grizzly bear population is that they have a low reproductive rate. Grizzly bears do not reach sexual maturity until they are at least five years old. Mating occurs in the summer but the embryo goes into stasis until the female is in hibernation. If the female is not in good health and sufficient weight her system will abort the pregnancy. If she is healthy she will have the one to four cubs in the den while she sleeps. The cubs will stay with their mother for a couple of years, hibernating with her over two winters. During this time the main predator that the cubs need to fear is a male grizzly. Males will kill the cubs hoping to put the female in estrus so that they can mate with her. After a couple of years she will chase her offspring away and the cubs will be on their own. She may mate again that year if a male finds her while she is in estrus but grizzly bears are solitary and have large territories so it is possible that she may not find a mate for a year or two.

Lamar Valley

The Lamar Valley is a long valley that sits in between flowing hills on the northeast side of Yellowstone National Park. The valley follows the Lamar River from which it got its name. Another name that you often here for Lamar is the Serengeti of North America. The wide open valley is frequently home to herds of bison and pronghorn. Dear and big horn sheep are often found along its peripherals along with the occasional moose. Fox, coyote, badgers, ground squirrels and other smaller mammals scurry through the grass and sage while golden eagles, red-tailed hawk, osprey and other birds of prey circle in the sky above. The creatures that you see most frequently is the wild life watcher. People with their large scopes hoping to get a quick glance of one of the elusive wolves. Lamar was good to us this year especially on our last day in the park. We did not get to see any wolves but this large grizzly crossed the road near where we were parked. Yellowstone is one of the few places south of Canada where you can see a grizzly. In 1975 the grizzly bear was listed as a threatened species in the lower 48 states. Extensive hunting and habitat loss decimated a population that once stretched from Alaska to Mexico. Yellowstone was listed as one of six recovery areas for the species. In 1975 the Yellowstone grizzly population was estimated at 136 bears that occupied a territory of about 5 million acres. By 210 the population had increased to 602 occupying 14 million acres. While the Yellowstone numbers are hopeful they account for over half of the estimated grizzly bear population in the lower 48 states. Grizzly bears require a good deal of territory to roam and as a predator they are often misunderstood and maligned by people who make a living raising livestock in the region.     

Bearly Far Enough Away

 

 There have been very few time that I have been worried about my safety while I have been out photographing. Most the time I am not photographing anything dangerous but on occasion I have had opportunities and been quite close to moose, wolf, bobcat and black bear. I always make sure I do not get any closer then the animal will tolerate. I do not want to stress the animal or find myself in a bad situation.

The one time that I was kind of worried was on a trip to Yellowstone a few years back. As we were driving down the road on our way to the Lamar Valley I noticed a guy looking at something of to the side of the road. I stopped to check it out and found that he was looking at a grizzly bear seeping in a little home made bad about 100 yards away. Shortly after I got there the bear stood up and looked directly at us. I am guessing that it had caught a whiff of our scent on the wind. Bears have a very good sense of smell. Even though it was a good football field away it was still pretty scary. Bears can run quite fast so it would have been an all out sprint to the car, which was about 25 feet away, if the bear had charged. Even so we both decided it would be a good idea to back up. We slowly moved back towards the road and my car, walking backwards and keeping an eye on the bear as we went. After a few minutes it must have decided that we were not a threat because it lay back down in its hole and went back to sleep. I have ended up closer to grizzlies on a couple of occasions but have never had one stare me in the eyes like this one did and hope that I never do in the future.

Grizzly Bear Feeding on Bison Carcass

 

Grizzly Fatallity

Yellowstone National Park is home to approximately 600 grizzly bear. Yellowstone is also the destination of over 4 million tourists each year. Most of the time interactions between the bears and humans is exciting and safe, with cars lining the side of the road at the sight of a bear. This week however things were not so safe at Yellowstone. On this past Wednesday a California man was killed by a bear while hiking with his wife in the park. It is the first time that a human has been killed by a bear in Yellowstone since 1986.
Although the grizzly is the top predator in Yellowstone they are most often wary and avoid contact with people. Even though they have a size advantage it is extremely rare that a grizzly would consider a human as prey. Most grizzly attacks are the result of a person walking close and surprising a bear. This is compounded when the bear is a sow with cubs. About 70% of all fatal attacks come from mothers who are protecting their cubs. In this case the hikers did surprise a mother with two cubs.
It is unfortunate that someone died as a result of this encounter. We do not usually go hiking in the back country at Yellowstone but we have been told to make sure and where bells or make noise so that you do not accidentally startle a bear. If you are attacked the proper procedure with a grizzly is to play dead. The second hiker was not hurt as the bear grabbed her by her pack and she played dead. Usually when a bear attacks a person the bear is captured and euthanized. In this case though it is believed that the bear was just protecting its cubs, a normal reaction for a bear so they do not plan on punishing the bear.

Yellowstone Part 3

We started out Wednesday by heading back over to the Yellowstone Lake area by the Fishing Bridge. As we got to the lake, much of which was still frozen, we saw two small dark shapes out on the ice. We stopped to take a closer look and found that they were a pair of river otters. One otter, pictured above, seemed to be resting near the edge of the ice while the other was running around.
After the otters finally disappeared under the ice we headed out towards the east entrance. The road was still closed off due to danger of avalanche but we did find a couple of grizzly to photograph, one at Mary's Bay and another at Sedge Bay. Unfortunately we still were not able to find the grizzly sow and cub.
Since the sky was beginning to clear up we decided to head back around the southern end of the park so that we could get some pictures of Old Faithful erupting. We had tried a couple of days earlier but the weather that day made it difficult to get good shots. With nice blue skies the pics turned out much better.
After Old Faithful we headed up to Mammoth and the north entrance to the park. We had hoped to get some more shots of the new born big horn lamb that we had seen a couple of days earlier but as we came around the corner we could not see the sheep on the cliff face where we had seen them earlier. We did see some cars pulled off a little way down the road so we headed that way to check it out. There on the hill not far from the road was the big horn ewe and lamb. Since they were much closer we were able to get a lot of good pics. It was amazing to see this little lamb scurry around on the rocks and cliffs at the ripe old age of two days.
It was getting late so we decided to head back to our hotel in West Yellowstone. On the way we spotted two black bears in different areas. The first black bear was indeed black, above, but the second was a cinnamon black bear. Black bear is a species and can come in a variety of colors, although black is the most common.

Thursday was our last day in the park. We were already quite happy with all of the great wildlife that we had seen and the photo opportunities that we had. So we decided for the finally day we would go all the way around the park, except the road between Tower and Canyon which was still closed due to snow, and just see whatever we would find. On the south loop near the Lake Area turn off a large bird flew across the road and perched in a tree close by. It turned out to be a Swanson's hawk that was cooperative and let us stop to take some pictures.

Then we headed up top the Grand Canyon of Yellowstone to take some scenery shots. This shot was taken from Artist Point and the falls in the distance are the Lower Falls of the Yellowstone River. We do not spend much time in this area because I am afraid of heights. Since places like this bother me we just took the shot and got going as quick as possible.
Next stop was Mammoth where we were surprised and pleased to find that one of the local elk females had calved the day before. A small heard of elk live in Mammoth and the surrounding area. Since the main predators of elk are wolves and grizzly it is smart to stay in a place that has a lot of people to keep the predators away. However the elk themselves can be dangerous to people in Mammoth that get too close. The ranger, who was keeping spectators from getting to close to the elk and calf, told us that she had chased a park employee who unknowingly had gotten too close to the calf.
Bull elk usually are found alone or in small groups at this time of the year. A healthy buck like this does not have too much to fear from the predators so they usually wonder about more in the highland areas on the north side of the park. During the fall each bull will be surrounded by a harem of females in hopes that he will find one that is receptive to mating. Shortly after we took this picture it began to snow again. It was not bad on the north end but as we passed Mammoth and headed towards Norris the snow on the roads began to get deeper and driving more treacherous. I am used to driving in the snow but roads here in Minnesota get plowed and sanded. They are also wider and do not have steep drop offs or rivers on the side. We were worried that we might have to park and sleep in the car. Fortunately things got better after Norris and we were able to make it out to West Yellowstone.

Yellowstone Part 1

Since Yellowstone is such a big place, and since we ended up taking many pictures over vacation I have decided to post pics from the vacation primarily in three posts. This first post will cover the first couple of days. We did most of our driving to the park on Friday. Thirteen hours of driving got us to Billing, MT where we stayed the night. Saturday we got up and drove the last three hours to the park. We were not in too much of a hurry because of the gray rainy skies. The weather forecast had rain every day for the entire week and my mood was as gloomy as the skies. I had a bad feeling that this vacation was going to end up as a train wreck. Looking back I was kind of right but not in the way in which I was thinking
We arrived at the north entrance of the park around 10:00am and headed right out towards the Lamar Valley. As we came to the bridge into the Little America area there were many cars parked on the side of the road so we stopped to see what everyone was looking at. Down the slope near the river a black bear was munching on the grass. I took a few pictures and then heard someone mention that there were male big horn sheep a bit further down the road.
Since we think that big horned sheep rams are more interesting then a black bear trimming the lawn, that is probably because we have a good population of black bear in Minnesota and absolutely no wild big horned sheep, I ran back to the car and we moved down the road. We found about a dozen or so rams with a few female and young ones mixed in. We have seen big horn rams in the park before but never so many in one group. We watched and photographed their behavior, including some head butting, for a while and then decided to continue on, since we still had not been to our motel yet.
On our way back around the park, the road between Canyon and Tower does not open up until Memorial Day weekend or later because of all the snow in the mount Washburn pass, we spotted a wolf running parallel to the road between Mammoth and Norris. I pulled over grabbed the camera jumped out of the car and began to follow and photograph the wolf. About two miles later the wolf met up with another wolf, I found out that the other wolf had been a couple of hundred feet ahead of the one that I was following, and the two shortly disappeared into the trees. Fortunately for me Michelle picked me up with the car because I was not looking forward to running another couple of miles to get back. With all of that running after the wolves I slept pretty soundly that night.
We started out back into the park early the next morning. The skies had cleared as the day progressed on Saturday and the nice weather continued on Sunday morning. I had talked with several photographers on Saturday and found that many people had been seeing grizzly over by Yellowstone Lake so we headed over through Canyon on our way to Fishing Bridge. On our way we found another jam up of cars so we decided to stop and find out what was going on. It was another bear, but this time it was a grizzly and it was eating at a carcass. I made my way through the trees and snow to where I could photograph the bear from across the river. I found out later that the bear had been eating on the carcass for days, though I am not sure that the bear killed the bison or whether it had just found a convenient meal. We continued to check the carcass for the rest of the trip but I guess that there was not enough meat left to entice another bear.
At Yellowstone Lake we did find another grizzly but it was kind of far away and sleeping so after waiting a bit we decided to continue south on the loop and hook around to Old faithful. We usually do not see that much on the south end of the park, this could be because it is a bit higher elevation, but as we turned the corner and began going north again we were treated to an osprey perched on a tree over looking the Firehole River.
After the osprey took off in the opposite direction in search of a fish we continued north. When we got to Mammoth I decided to check out the North Entrance before heading back out towards Tower and Lamar Valley. I was primarily looking for golden eagle, since we did see them nest in the area a few years back, but the only thing that we found was a female big horned sheep hugging the cliff wall far above the road. I thought that it would be cool to get a picture of the sheep in its natural habitat so we stopped to take a pic and that's when I noticed a small lamb clinging to mom's side. We found out later that the lamb was only hours old when we took this pic.After a few minutes the ewe and her lamb laid down to get some rest and it was very difficult to so the lamb so we decided to move on back into the park. On our way into Mammoth we spotted this mule deer on a hill overlooking the road. Normally I do not spend much time photographing deer but since the sun was on its way down the light was very good. With no place to pull over I jumped out of the car and snapped a couple of quick pics before any cars came up behind us.
With night approaching we decide to start heading back towards West Yellowstone. As we drove between Mammoth and Norris I saw something moving in water near the road and so I stopped. We had seen beaver here in the past, including the day before, but usually they were much further away. This one was munching on a twig pretty close to the road. The only problem was that the setting sun made the lighting tricky.
A little further down the road from the beaver we ran into the same wolf that we had photographed the day before. This time it was heading south towards Norris. Again I grabbed the camera and jumped out of the car. This time the wolf kept to the road, which was unfortunate because people were chasing it down the road in their car. On several occasions people came close to hitting another car or the wolf as they tried to race ahead to catch up to or get a head of the wolf. I kept following on foot for several miles until it was getting dark. Finally Michelle was able to catch up to me with the car and we decided to leave the wolf in peace and head back to our hotel. Even though it had rained on both days we also had periods of blue sky and after only two days I know that my fears about this vacation had been proven wrong, at least as far as the shooting opportunities were concerned.

Calendar Pics from Yellowstone

The calendar that I put together each year is like a compilation of the best pictures that Michelle and I took during that year. The only rule is that the picture had to be taken in the year prior to when the calendar was created, although Michelle also has an unofficial rule prohibiting me from including a lot of bugs. Since we usually spend our vacation each year out shooting pics it stands to reason that quite a few pics in the calendar come from vacation shots. In 2009 we traveled to Yellowstone in the spring and 5 of the 14 calendar pics were taken during the trip.

The osprey is fascinating bird. These diurnal raptors were at one time called a fishing hawk however they are not a member of the hawk family. The osprey is in a family by itself mostly because of their unique feet. Osprey have 4 toes which are all an equal length, the toes of other raptors differ in length. They are also the only raptor, other then owls whose outside toe is reversible, allowing it to face forward or back. We photographed this osprey near its nest outside of West Yellowstone.

For the past two calendars, 2009 and 2010, we have featured a picture of an American kestrel. It is possible that it is the same kestrel as we have photographed it in nearly the same location in the Lamar Valley each year. These kestrel pics are some of the best kestrel pics that we have taken mostly due to the natural surrounding in the background, most of the other kestrel pics that I have taken are when they are on electrical lines.

Pretty much every year that we have gone to Yellowstone in the spring we have been fortunate enough to be able to get good pics of grizzly bear. When we have gone to Yellowstone in the fall we have never spotted any grizzly so if you are looking to photograph grizzly in Yellowstone I recommend that you visit in the spring time. We photographed this fellow digging up ground squirrels for breakfast along the road to Mammoth.

The other real cool thing about Yellowstone in the spring is the opportunity, if you are patient and lucky, to get a view of all of the new life. We have photographed red fox in Yellowstone several times over the years but we had always hoped to spot a den so that we could get pictures of the pups. This year, thanks to a tip from another photographer, we got our wish. We took a half a day to travel out to the east entrance where a mother fox had set up her den under the stairs of an old building. Because of their proximity to humans they did not seem to mind people much, even pesky photographers, which was good for us but probably not so good for them.

The other new baby pics in the 2010 calendar were of a badger with kits. We waited a total of about six hours to get the shots, Michelle was smart and stayed in the car reading while I sat out in the middle of a field in the Lamar Valley with a bunch of other photographers, but it was certainly worth the wait. She had four kits that she finally brought out of the den for us all to see. Unfortunately I never was able to get a good shot of all four kits facing the camera so I decided on this one with mom and one of the kids.

Grizzly Bear

One of the largest predators in North America, polar bears in the far northern reaches of the continent are larger, the grizzly bear is a subspecies of the brown bear. Grizzly bears are found in Alaska, western Canada and the northwestern United States.
Grizzlies range in size depending upon the area in which they are found. Bears living in the coastal areas of Alaska, places like Katmai National Park, can grow to weigh around 1000 pounds where inland bears in Canada may only grow to weigh 300 pounds. Most of the difference in size has to do with the sort of food that is available. Grizzly bears are omnivores, meaning that they eat both plants and meat. Coastal bears tend to grow larger because of the availability of Salmon and other fish, which are high in protein which help the bears to grow. Inland where meat is a rare treat the grizzlies eat mainly pine nuts, berries, roots, grasses, and insects.

Grizzlies live mostly solitary lives. Mating typically begins in late May when the males go out looking for a suitable female. Since a bears primary sense is smell the male will use his nose to try and pick up scent trails that the female leaves behind. He will follow the trail until he finds the female. The two bears approach each other cautiously, a meeting like this at other times of the year might end up in a fight, and spend some time getting to know each other. If they bond they will only stay together for up to a couple of weeks then each bear will go its own way.

If the female is impregnated she will not immediately become pregnant. The fertilized egg begins to develop but then stops at the blastocyst stage. The embryo then sits in the uterus for several months until it is time for the bear to hibernate. If the bear is in good physical condition at that time then the embryo will implant itself to the uterine wall and begin to develop and in January or February the bear will awaken to give birth. If the bear is not in good health when she begins hibernate then her body will reabsorb the embryo and end the pregnancy.

The baby bears are born blind and helpless. They will spend the rest of the winter suckling milk from mom inside the den. By the time mom wakes up from her winter slumber and is ready to leave the den the cubs will have grown to weigh six to eight times what they did when they were born just a few short months before. The young bears will spend about two years with their mother. They will continue to look to here to provide them with milk to help them grow until they get to the age when they will eat more solid foods. They will also need mom to protect them. Adult grizzly bears have no natural enemies but cubs can fall prey to other predators like coyotes, wolves , and other bears. Male bears will often kill cubs, especially ones that are with a female around mating time. While the female has cubs with her she will not go into estrus and thus will not mate. So the males know that the only chance they will have to mate with a female who still has cubs is to kill the cubs. If the cubs live to be two years old then mom will chase them away when mating season arrives so that she can start the process over again. The two year old cubs will have to fend for themselves from then on. I took these photographs in Yellowstone where there they estimate the grizzly population at around 550.

Wordless Wednesday: Grizzly Bear

Yellowstone Grizzly

This year was our fourth visit to Yellowstone in the spring, we have also been to Yellowstone three times in the fall. The first grizzly that we spotted in the park was on our first trip during the spring, end of May. We headed out to the Lamar Valley right away when we got to the park. Out in Lamar the traffic was stopped because of a male grizzly that was hovering around a kill in the river near where the Soda Butte Creek and Lamar converge. The rangers were not taking any chances with this bear. They did not let anyone get out of there car and eventually brought in a bear trap to capture the bear and move it away from people. We did manage to get a couple of pics from our car window. That was the only grizzly that we spotted on that trip.

Our next spring trip we managed to photograph a female grizzly with a couple of cubs as they crossed Swan Lake Flats. This also occurred on the day that we arrived and it was our only grizzly sighting of the trip. Our third spring trip, 2007, was a bust for spotting grizzlies, just as all of our fall trips have been.

This years trip started out the same as our first two spring trips. Out in the Lamar Valley we spotted a grizzly on our first day in the park, but unlike our past trips that was only the beginning of our grizzly bear sightings.
While traveling to the fishing bridge on Tuesday we spotted what looks to be grizzly tracks. This is not something that you would want to see if you were of hiking in the woods.
Out near Grizzly Lake this bear demonstrated the fine art of ground squirrel digging. The hump, over the grizzlies shoulders, is one trait that distinguishes it from the black bear. The hump is a mass of muscles which helps the grizzly to dig up roots, bugs and rodents, such as ground squirrels.
Grizzlies are omnivores, they eat both meat and vegetation. This bear was getting his roughage over near the Twin Lakes. Since Spring in Yellowstone came late this year, just as it has in many places across North America, a lot of the area, especially the higher elevations was still covered in snow. I believed that this forced many of the bears down to lower elevations, and closer to the park roads, in order to find food. This is probably the reason why we spotted so many grizzly this year.
While the snow may have helped us to have more grizzly viewing opportunities, it also created problems for us at times. There were several times during the trip that we came across grizzlies but we were unable to get any pics due to the weather. Photographing a dark furred animal in low light with bright white snow flying in front of it, is a photographer's nightmare.