River Otter

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge

With the Independence Day holiday last week I had a three day weekend so I decided to head over to central Wisconsin and shoot in the Necedah NWR for a couple of days. This was my first opportunity to get a look at the new visitors center and it is very impressive. Inside is a store, educational displays, offices, an info desk, small theatre and a nice sitting room complete with a fireplace. You can see from the picture above that much of the building is powered by renewable solar power.
One of the things that Necedah is famous for is their work with the endangered whooping crane. It is dangerous to have the majority of the remaining population of whoopers all in one area. Disease or natural disaster could destroy the entire population adding another extinct bird to the list. So the staff at Necedah has been working with a number of other organizations to set up a second migrating population. Unfortunately the only crane that I spotted over the weekend was a sandhill crane.
There were a lot of young birds that had recently fledged. I found a young kingbird perched on a branch overhanging a small stream. I watched for a while and was rewarded as one of the parents came down to feed the youngster a plump insect.
As I watched the kingbirds feeding four river otters appeared and began to play in the stream. So I switched subjects. I think that Michelle was kind of jealous because she really likes to watch otters.
Necedah has a variety of habitats to explore. Near the new Visitors Center they have built some trails into and over the wetlands. Raised boardwalks help give visitors a good look at wildlife with out getting their feet too wet.
I also took a hike on the new boardwalk that skits a boggy area. I was hoping to get a glance and a photo of a ringed boghaunter dragonfly. Necedah is in one of the few counties in Wisconsin where this member of the emerald family can be found, the only other place to find them in the Midwest is Michigan. It was a little late in the year for the boghaunter but I did find quite a few racket-tailed emeralds.
Also near the bog trail I found several bobolink. There were two pairs that squawked at me noisily as I walked down the trail. I wonder if they were nesting near the trail and I was getting to close to the nest.
One of the birds that I always like to photograph when I go to Necedah is the red-headed woodpecker. Although they are not endangered like the whooper are their population has been decreasing over the years. The problem that they are facing is habitat lose. Red-headed woodpeckers live in a habitat that has a lot of dead trees for nesting and caching food. They also require some space between the trees. This type of habitat has become scarce and the red-head population has declined as a result. Fortunately Necedah still has a lot of area that fits the bill and it is quite easy to see the red-heads flitting between the trees.
On my way out of the refuge I saw another youngster crossing the road. Mom was already in the woods on the side of the road but junior slowed down to take a look at the curios shiny creature on the road in front of him.

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.

Other interesting things that I found at Crex Meadows

On my last trip to Crex Meadows I photographed a few interesting things that were not birds. First I found this banded woolly bear caterpillar walking down the road. Woolly bear caterpillars hibernate over the winter. It is estimated that they can survive temperatures down to -90 degrees. They survive in extreme cold because of their bristly hair and because they produce a type of anti-freeze coating. At this time of the year they are probably looking for a good place to hibernate, usually under a log or a rock. In the spring time they wake up from hibernation, eat for a couple of weeks and then spin a cocoon. A few weeks later they emerges from the cocoon as an isabella tiger moth.

I also found a perched green darner dragonfly. You can tell that this one is a female because her abdomen is red. Males have a blue abdomen where females can have either a blue or red abdomen.It was a beautiful day so it was no surprise to find a few turtles out sunning themselves. You can almost always see them out on rocks, logs, or the shoreline on a sunny day.The highlight of this trip was spotting a river otter. I new that there were otters in the area but this is the first one that I have spotted in Crex. It is actually the first that I have spotted in this part of the country.Otters are very fun to watch. They are often curious and sometimes even playful. In the past I have photographed river otters in Yellowstone National Park and in Big Cypress National Preserve, down in Florida. I have photographed sea otters in Monterey Bay, CA and up in Alaska.