Grand Prismatic Hotsprings, Yellowstone

Yellowstone National Park really is an amazing place- and we were fortunate that it lay on the route from Lander to John Byers’ pronghorn study in western Montana. We were doubly fortunate in that our colleague, Stan Harter, could take a couple of days to show us around. Stan wrote about our trip in the Spring 2012  issue of the Wyoming chapter of The Wildlife Society (pages 8-10). One excerpt from our second evening in the park:

Sunset on the Lamar Valley was spent on an overlook toward the west end of the main valley. However, we weren’t looking west into the sunset, as the grandest scene in the land unfolded before us, with bison crossing the river, an osprey tending its nest in a high cottonwood, several elk prancing high-necked as if on high alert, more bison and pronghorn mingling about near a cluster of aspen near the river, and on a high ridge another grizzly that seemed larger than the bison which was actually closer to us.
After the sun’s last rays vanished over the western horizon into a cloudless night, we hastened back to the point where we had seen the Mollie’s wolves earlier. A memorable scene

Bison bulls bully full wolves.

unfolded from a seemingly lackluster situation. Twelve of the canids were stretched out in the grass just below the cached carcass in the trees, sleeping off their version of a Thanksgiving food coma. Boring, right!! Not so! After a few minutes of this, we nearly missed the best event ever! A big bull bison was feeding his way uphill into the sprawl of canine slumber, and as he approached, the wolves scrambled out of his way. It was as if the bison was telling them who was really boss. Then about 10 minutes later, another bull did the same thing – and yet another bull followed suit a bit later still. Each time the wolves would bed down again, only to be booted out by the bison!!

I’ve put a few photos up in a Flickr album, and will at some point hopefully merge in some from our last trip in 2010. You may think a hundred something photos hardly qualifies as “a few”, but given that I may have shot 50gb of pictures over our 3 day/2night stay in the park, I stand by that statement!