June 17, 2014

This was a busy day. Wolves, bears, and mountain goats (well, one anyway).

It started at around 6:30 when I arrived at the bison carcass at the east end of the Lamar Valley. There were 2 grizzly bears and 3 wolves there and lots of activity. The bears would trade off feeding and the wolves would get in when they could:

The bear with the collar, on the left, is Scarface. The other bear is a healthy younger male. At one point, the 2 bears got into an argument and the wolves took advantage:

After about 90 minutes of this, it started to rain, so Yoshi and I went into Cooke City to do internet stuff. That's when I last updated the blog. When we got back about 2 hours later, the bears and wolves were gone and a 4^th wolf had replaced them. This was 889F, a collared female. The number is the number of her collar. That's how they “name” the wolves here. You'll hear someone say ”Oh, I saw 755 today” or “889 was with 925”. By referencing the wolf chart sold in the bookstores, you can tell which pack and individuals they are talking about. In this case, 889 is a female who was born in the Mollie's pack and has paired with 755. 755 was the alpha male of the Lamar Canyon pack. They don't know where he came from, most likely outside the park. About 18 months ago the alpha female and 755's brother, 754 were killed by hunters just outside the park. That destroyed the pack and he's been searching for another mate since. They will call it a pack when they have pups that survive a winter. So far, this hasn't happened. If it sounds like a large soap opera, that's because it is.

889 fed for a while and then headed down the valley, with about 30 cars in tow. She was paralleling the road and this great long caravan was following along. Several times, the rangers stopped the traffic so she could cross the road. This went on for nearly 4 miles. I managed to get ahead of her and setup the camera at a turnout, hoping she would pass close. She did:

Here, you can see how much she has eaten:

She looks like a watermelon with legs and a head. Her collar has a GPS so the researchers can more closely track her movements. That's the white box you see in the photos.

After she passed me, she crossed the road again and headed up into the hills. That ended most of the day's entertainment.

I did learn something about yesterday's incident where the bull bison brought the calf to the carcass. The story is that female bison will not adopt an orphan, but males will. This was a large healthy bull who had, apparently, adopted the newly orphaned calf. I guess it was showing that mom was gone and he was now the guardian.

Later in the day, I stopped back at the falcon nest and got a few photos:

And, towards the end of the afternoon, I went over to Swan Lake to see if I could find a grizzly with cubs that others have been talking about. No luck, but I did see a mountain goat up, close. I didn't know that they lived there:

The rest of the evening was spent back in the Lamar Valley watching the carcass. A steady stream of bears and coyotes came along and I spent the time watching and talking with all the people who came by and letting people look through the scope. A newlywed couple from Indiana stopped and stayed quite a while watching the action. Another couple from Indiana who couldn't believe we were seeing much through the scope, until they saw for themselves stayed a while. Finally a man and his mother from Florida stopped and got all interested in taking photos through the scope.