Tuesday, May 21, 2024 My last day here in the park. I'm leaving for home tomorrow and expect to get there around noon on Thursday. It's been a pretty good year. Lots of wolves and bears and a few other unexpected things like the coyote cubs.
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Monday, May 20, 2024 Still chilly and wet. I think the warmest I saw today was 49F, with occasional rain and snow showers. Saw the pups again. Getting pictures or video is really tough. The distance is about 1.5 miles and, when the light is good, which means sunny, the air is turbulent. Later, I went to find bear cubs. I found this: Which led me to this: No cubs, but at least a bear.
Sunday, May 19,2024 Puppies! Finally the wolf pups came out of the den today. Twice, 3 pups were seen. 2 blacks and 1 gray. I didn't get pictures because the thermal distortion made it tough just to see at times. And, we we struggling to make sure we were seeing pups and not shadows. But, in the end, we agreed that there had been 3. The weather was a very mixed bag. We had sun, wind, rain and snow. It got sorta warm and cold enough for me to get back into my winter gear.
Saturday, May 18, 2024 Still no wolf pups, sort of. I arrived at the den site about an hour too late this morning and missed some drama between 2 of the female adults and a pup. Apparently, one female took a pup away from the den and the alpha female took it back after a bit of a skirmish. There was some extra cuteness today. I was driving in and, just past the Wraith Falls trailhead were lots of cars stopped. I asked what they were seeing and one man shouted “3 wolf pups!” and a woman said “3 coyote pups”. The guy responded that they were wolf pups. I was skeptical of his claim. If they were wolf pups, there would be a den near and wolves would have been seen a lot in the area. That hadn't happened. In addition, the road is sort of a boundary between 2 different packs' territories. They put their den in the middle of their territory, not on the edge. Either way, I parked and got this picture: They are coyotes.
Friday, May 17, 2024 Windy! It was windy all day. Not cold, but not really warm, either. Because of the wind, I didn't have much enthusiasm for watching the wolves. At the den, it's become a waiting game. We sit and watch nothing until a wolf brings food. Then, 3 or 4 wolves pop up out of the grass and there are greetings and wagging tails and running around for 5 or 10 minutes. Then everybody lays down and disappears in the grass again. I call it waiting for pizza delivery. Because of this, I haven't been spending much time there. But, we are expecting the pups to begin emerging from this den any day now, so I think I'm going to be spending much more timer there for the rest of the trip.
Thursday May 16, 2014 We got to watch a bison being harassed by 9 or 10 wolves today. They were apparently after the bison's calf and she was guarding it vigorously. This is a very edited version of the video I recorded. This is 1 minute of the original 10 minutes. At time 0:25, you can clearly see the calf and at 0:41, you can see wolves trying to drag it away. I think in all the melee, she stepped on it and killed it because after that point, you never see it again.
May 15, 2024 Today, I went down south to see waterfalls and geysers and ducks. The ducks are Harlequin ducks, seemingly found in one small place on the Yellowstone River. They are there every year at this time: Before that, I went to see the falls of the Yellowstone, It was foggy, but cleared enough for me to get this video: Finally, I went to the geyser basins and watched Old Faithful about a thousand of my closest friends: