Meetup With a Grizzly

In Yellowstone, the bears all seem to have names. Several people called individual bears by name. When I showed a picture of a bear to our camp host, he knew her name and history.  I didn't write down her name and forgot it but she is a five year old female bear. We spotted her in Hayden Valley in a car jam and managed to find a place to pull off and join the line of photographers.

She was grazing in a field on the west side of the road

Every once in awhile, she would turn to look at us

A few minutes later, she started walking towards the road.  The ranger asked us to move over to give her room to cross.  She began running and was too close to me for me to be able to focus on her. Then she continued across the road to the west side.  By the time I was able to find a place around the parked cars, she was already at the Yellowstone River.

At Riverside - note how grizzled her sides are

Swimming across the river - I love how animals know how to ferry - she swims slightly upstream so the current will push her across the river

She reached the far bank...

And then shook like a dog

It was cool enough to see her breath

Then she went back to grazing on the other side of the river

Mammoth in Macro

September 22, 2015

I've been lucky to get to see Yellowstone several times this summer, once by myself, and three times with different friends. So I've also seen a lot of the features several times. But, fortunately for me,  the seasons, the light and our own personal viewpoints have been different and thus each time I saw the features newly.

On this visit, I was with my friend, Laurel, who is looking for artistic pictures, rather than just documenting a visit. On my last visit to Mammoth, I concentrated on landscapes. I just realized I didn't show you any of my pictures. They are the early pictures in this album. (To see it in full screen as a slideshow, click on the first little icon on the top right-hand side.)

This time, Laurel had already visited Mammoth while on the way to meet me so we only did a little at the very top and back of the the main feature.  And I was more interested in the patterns and macro views.  These don't give you much sense of the big picture, but I think the little bits are interesting also.

These are formed by mineral deposits

An even closer look

I'm not sure if these are living organisms or artifacts built from the minerals

But those tendrils were swaying and seemed to be the consistency of raw egg white.

One landscape view

Second Chance for a Barn Owl

September 30, 2015

On September 10, Bill West, the manager of Red Rock Lakes Refuge, forwarded us a picture of a barn owl hanging from a fence.  It was taken September 9 by Mia McPherson, a bird photographer who spends a lot of time on our refuge.

The owl on the fence - used by permission

Bill White, the refuge manage, happened to come by and took the owl  to the Animal Shelter in Dillon, and then  it was relayed to Whitehall, where people from the Raptor Conservation Center, in Bozeman, picked it up. Read Mia's moving story of how she and Ron cut it out of the fence here.

 On September 30, while I was rushing around, trying to fit the last little bit into my car to leave and get the trailer clean, I heard the owl was coming back to the refuge to be released. I spent about an hour in the office waiting for the Raptor Rehab people.

The owl had hardly been hurt.  It only had a couple of holes in its wings that needed to be sutured, but no broken bones.  It flew off strongly during the release.  It set down in the field and then flew further away.  I only caught the first few seconds of its flight.

So, because of the rescue, this owl gets a new chance at life.

Owl being brought out by one of the Raptor Rehab people

They put the crate on the back of a refuge pickup to give the owl a little height
to make its first lift-off easier

Karen wasn't taking pictures, so got to do the actual release

She gingerly opened the crate

Stepped back and waited.... and waited.... and waited

At just after noon, this was not the owl's time to fly

Karen was told to raise the create but still nothing happened

I moved forward to take a closeup

Then the Raptor Rehab guy came up to check on the owl and touched it. It bombed out of the box and few strongly off.

Free again

This was my last adventure in Montana.  I'll be in Texas when this blog comes out, hopefully finding lots of fall birds and visiting friends.

See Wild Bird Wednesday for more blogs on wild birds. Click on the picture.

That Beartooth Highway

The Beartooth Highway is one of the most scenic drives in the U.S. It is also subject to early closures, since it often starts snowing there in September. Laurel wanted to come through it on the way into Yellowstone, but a snowstorm had closed it.  A few days later, when we rendezvoused in Yellowstone, we decided to drive it the first day while the weather still allowed the trip.

To reach it, we had to drive through Lamar Valley and  then take time out to look for elk, bison, wolves and bears. We mostly only saw lots of bison and spent several minutes watching a coyote hunt.  We also saw pronghorn antelope. Then we strained to see wolves at the site of a dead bison, that was only barely visible with a telescope. So we didn't even get started on the Beartooth Highway until late in the morning. I had left without making coffee and found the stores closed for the season or still not yet open, until we finally were starting on the highway at Silver Gate.  That was REALLY good coffee.

The fall colors were amazing with big blocks of yellow, gold or orange quaking aspen and other yellow shrubs blazing against the dark green conifers.  (Don't worry - I threw out most of the fall color pictures and am just showing you a few favorites.)

Pretty spectacular, no?

More of the same

This creek was running along the roadside

I probably took 30 pictures of this mountain as we saw if repeatedly from many aspects as we climbed higher

This is one of my favorite pictures of it

Even short views were beautiful

It's even better to be with another photographer and see how she sees the same views
 - Laurel was also taking the view below. 

We were lucky to have still winds and beautiful light at this spot

Laurel attempting to capture all this beauty

A look at some of the switchbacks along the route

That tiny tooth-shaped mountain in the back is the Beartooth Mountain
 for which the highway is named

The views got longer as we climbed higher

A look down into one of the lakes

Lakes, mountains, and switchbacks

Another view from a campground

This was one of the views from an overlook

We had an awesome day and ended up stopping to eat supper at roadside in Lamar Valley while we enjoyed bison and pronghorns and the evening light before heading back to Norris Campground and a well-deserved sleep.

This was my second visit to the highway.  If you missed my first blog, when I was there in 2013, and want to see it, click here.

Hopefully, when this blog comes out, I'll be in Texas with only a part of a day left before I arrive at my daughter's house. Then I'll have a round of visits in Texas and Louisiana before heading east.  The good news is that I won't be able to schedule surgery so will be in paddling shape all fall.  But I'll have to schedule it for next year.