June 16, 2014

Today was about wolves and bears and coyotes.

I slept in today and didn't get up until 7:00. I went out to the Lamar Valley and there wasn't anything on the carcass. Yoshi was there. Then, a fellow came along and said there was another carcass further up the valley with wolves and coyotes competing for it. After a bit, we found it. There was a coyote on it. After a while, the coyote left and a grizzly arrived – it was Scarface. This is, after all, his front yard.

At this point in the valley, the river is about ¼ mile from the road and the carcass was maybe another ¼ mile beyond that. So, Yoshi and I decided to take our cameras down to the river for a chance at better photographs. We stayed until around 1:00. The bear left and the coyote returned. Also, some eagles arrived, including a juvenile:

Another interesting event happened. We had heard that the dead bison was a female that had an injured leg. Around noon, a bull with a calf came over and circled the carcass:

We think the calf was hers and the bull was taking it back to mom for the last time.

Then, it started to rain, so we got out. While we were there, though, we were comparing the performance of our respective cameras. We both had the same thing – a Canon 7d with a 600mm f/4 IS mark I. My pictures were much sharper than Yoshi's, though. After some talk and swapping lenses, we decided that his needed to have the focus adjusted. I was going to go do laundry, so he asked if I would help him do the adjustments while the laundry was going. That sounded like a good idea to me, so we headed over to Canyon. We got his camera adjusted and I was able to do the same with mine when the 1.4x extender was on. I was never happy with its performance before, and I thought that might be the problem.

The, after eating lunch, it was back out to see what was happening. When I got there Yoshi had already gone out to the river, so I joined him. There was a wolf feeding, but the bear was coming back. The wolf left and the bear started eating, and with my newly adjusted camera I was getting better pictures:

But, the wolf hadn't gone far. It was just getting out of the way while the bear had his turn. After a half hour or so, the bear left and the wolf resumed.

While all this was happening, a large crowd was gathering down near the river. This is a 1/4 mile walk through sagebrush and swampy land that's been stomped to mud by bison. It was getting noisy with kids yelling and throwing rocks in the river and adults shouting to each other. It was making the wolf nervous – it kept looking back at us. Yoshi and I had to finally tell the people to be quiet as it was disturbing the wolf. Everyone was asking to look through my camera and generally being pests. Normally I don't mind that at a turnout, but we had gone down there to get away from all that.

One more interesting thing happened. While the wolf was feeding, the coyote returned. Normally, these two are bitter enemies. They compete for the same food. This time, though, they fed together:

After they left, it started to rain again, so we left as well.