Velvet

Wow.  Now this is a close up!  You can even see why they call the membrane covering an elk's horns during growth "velvet."

Come rutting season, the elk scrape that velvet off on tree trunks.  It's like taking a sword out of a sheath:  he's getting ready for battle!

What's that in the top right corner?  More horns?

 Yuppers!

Adios, amigo.

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Elk Pond

We finally tear ourselves away from the grizzly (so to speak) and mosey on down the road lookin' for some more interesting stuff.  

The elk pond isn't just for elk.  See the three buffalo in the back?  But only the elk (and a few Canadian geese) were in the pond...

When we zoom out too much we run out of pixels, but occasionally it's kinda fun...

I think this was the only buck in the bunch.  Compared to some of the elk we saw, though, this guy's rack is pretty small, so I'm thinkin' he was just a juvey.

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A Monster Grizzly !

No! Really!  It's HUGE!  There is no mistaking this guy for a "teenager."  He is the real deal!

 Thank goodness he was on one side of the river, and we were on the other!

The grizzly bear is officially named the Ursus arctos horribilis. (What an appropriate name - even if it was an accidental naming.  The guy that did the naming misunderstood what folks were telling him.  Instead of "grizzly," he thought they meant "grisly," which means inspiring horror or intense fear.)  This bear is more affectionately sometimes called a silver tip.  I've seen lots of photos of grizzly bear - but I honestly think our photos on this trip better show the grizzle, or silver tips, than any other photos I've ever seen.  Maybe he'd just had a bath.  Maybe it was the super bright sunlight.  Regardless, I think we got some great photos!

These guys are apparently descended from Russian brown bears and came to North America across the land bridge to Alaska.  (That's the only way I'll ever get to Europe - when they build a bridge from Alaska...)  They hung out wa-a-a-a-y up north until about 13,000 years ago when they began to wander down into what is now the U.S.

I'm pretty sure this is a male because he hangs out by himself and lives in a man-cave.  (Not really.  Hangs out by himself, yes, but no on the man-cave part.  I just couldn't resist...)




We tracked him for over an hour.  I'm still totally amazed at that.  Even though there were the usual stupid tourists running down to the river to get better pictures, he didn't seem very perturbed.  You know, Yellowstone is closed to all but a very few folks (about 400 I think) in the late fall and winter months.  I used to think it was because of the treacherous nature of snow and ice and minus 40 temperatures; now I believe it has something to do with the rutting season of these wild animals, too.  If we're too stupid to keep our distance when these guys are in a good mood, we're probably too stupid to keep our distance when the male buffalo, elk, and bear are hunting for a mate...  I'd bet it's pretty loud and scary around these parts about then!

Females only have cubs every other year, sometimes as many as FOUR, and they only weigh about one pound each when they're born.  Wild grizzlies can live up to thirty years!

Yellowstone is about as far south as you'll be finding a grizzly now.  They used to be found all the way into Mexico.  In fact, the California state flag sports the image of a grizzly bear, but they have been ecologically extinct there since the last one was shot in 1922.  (So much for California conservationists...)  How do you count how many grizzly bears there are?  It's not as easy as counting their feet and dividing by four.  Canadian authorities do it by "hair-snagging, DNA-based inventories, mark-recapture and a refined multiple regression model."  I'm thinking counting feet and dividing by four would be so much easier...

In Yellowstone, a griz mostly eats berries, whitebark pine nuts, tubers, grasses, small rodents, army cutworm moths (yucko pooey pooey!), lady bugs, bees, ants and they will scavenge carcasses they happen across.  Canadian grizzlies are usually bigger than ours because they get to feast on the salmon.

He just moseyed, and moseyed, and moseyed.  We finally had to tear ourselves away.  I mean, really, John, seventy snapshots plus videos?  (Golly I wish I could show them ALL to you guys!  They are amazing.  Granpa did good!)  Bye-bye, Mr. Bear.

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Barely a Bear and a Buffalo Nursery

Yup.  This is a black bear, and we weren't quick enough with the camera.  Bummer.  He/she was a big one.  We heard later that there was one in this area with two cubs.  If this was her, we never saw the cubs. 

I really like this photo: three mommas, three babies, and Big Daddy.  (I'm not sure what's up with his tail, but, oh well... )

I'm thinkin' these are two mommas murmuring about problem kids (or, in this case, calves).  Since both males and females grow horns it's kinda hard to tell who's who.  But we thought this was a cool picture - they are so perfectly positioned it's almost a mirror image of a single buffalo.  (I don't think I'd like to get a huge mirror close to these critters.  It could be a "shattering" experience.)

 

Most babies are cute, even baby cows.  But baby buffalo?  Not so much, huh?

 

This one is already getting his/her horns, and its hump back is becoming more prominent.

This may be the only photo we've ever gotten with a "heads up."  Can't say I even knew they could get their head that far up.  It looks like it's sniffing that tree, but I think it's actually 10-15 feet in front of it.  And, what's with that hairy chin? 

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CNN, Ted Turner, and Yellowstone Buffalo

My, my.  I learn something every day!

Ted Turner is the founder of CNN.  (I think I knew that...)

Ted Turner owns fifteen ranches in seven states.  (Didn't know that!)  And those ranches are one of the largest producers of bison meat for the retail market.  That may be because he has 55,000 head of buffalo.  He also created Ted's Montana Grill, a chain of bison steakhouses.

Ol' Ted has made a deal with Yellowstone.  Seems the Yellowstone buffalo are the only genetically pure ones left.  (I guess all the others have been cross bred with cows.)  The deal is, eighty-eight disease free Yellowstone buffalo have been moved to Ted Turner's Montana Flying D Ranch.  He'll keep them for five years, then return them and 25% of their offspring to Yellowstone.  (That means he probably gets to keep 185.)  The plan is to see if they can stay disease free, and the long-range plan is to see if the "overflow" Yellowstone bison can be carted off to public and tribal land to repopulate free-range style.

In 1902 the Yellowstone herd numbered about fifty.  That herd is now at about 4,500, and has been doing so well that Park officials had to kill 1,400 back in 2008 alone.  (I wonder.  Did they do that with a bow and arrow? )

Brucellosis is the disease that concerns ranchers, and the Yellowstone herd was the last to get that disease.  It spreads pretty easily to cows, and even humans can get it - but it usually just causes high fevers in people. In cattle or bison it cause them to lose babies.   Only about 50% of the Yellowstone buffalo has brucellosis - and none of those went to Turner.

Being from Texas, we don't know much about the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) because all of Texas land is still sovereign to the state of Texas.  But the BLM is a major presence in most states.  Out West, the BLM leases a lot of public range land to ranchers for grazing their cattle on.  If the Federal government now starts putting buffalo out there to compete with the cattle for grass, is that fair to the ranchers payin' for grazing rights?  And since the buffalo are supposed to range free, what's to keep them from having a temper tantrum on a rancher or his cattle?  or breeding with his cattle?

Questions.  Always with the questions.  But, what I didn't know was that Ted Turner of CNN fame is makin' deals with the Feds...  And I wonder what kind of tax breaks he gets for having those ranches?

Aw, now.  You're gettin' political.  Better back it down.

Maybe.

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Firehole Falls

This is on a side loop from the main Yellowstone roads.  It's pretty, but the story it shows is the true history of Yellowstone. 

So many people drove through here and stopped to take pictures and they completely missed the story - because they didn't read the story!  READ, folks, READ!  We've seen people pull off of the highway at historical markers, look around and say, nothing to see here, then drive on.  Hello!  The story is in the marker!  What?  Can you not read?

The story is in the rocks, literally.  I didn't see it until I read the interpretive signs the National Park was smart (and thoughtful) enough to put here.  Do you see the red?  That was slow moving lava flow.

See how it's smoother than the rocks around it.  That's because it was once melted, but this was very thick and slow moving.  More and more I feel as though I AM standing inside a volcano!

So cool.

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Bambi !!

 

Aww!  Twins!  Aren't they sweet?  And such a good momma!

We were driving around Mammoth Hot Springs absolutely not expecting to see any wildlife because of the swarms of cars and people, when what to our wondering eyes appears...

That reminds me!  We saw baby elk, too, and they're spotted just like these baby deer!  When was that?  Oh, yeah!  Our "Jackson Hole" day:

We were watching a nature program on PBS last night.  They were talking about wildlife in Scandinavian countries, and they kept calling what we know as moose, they called them elk.  How weird is that?  Why would they not be called by the same name?   But they also called what we know as elk, they called red deer. 

I call them all magnificently beautiful !!

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Yellowstone Hot Springs

Our first day in Yellowstone was actually spent in Jackson Hole, Wyoming and the Grand Teton National Park.  Our second day in Yellowstone was literally in Yellowstone.  We saw so-o-o-o many cool things!

Of course, Yellowstone is one humongous volcano - which is why there are all these hot springs and geysers everywhere.

The last eruption was 640,000 years ago, and it left a caldera of 34 miles by 45 miles.  MILES!  That was one SUPER volcano!  Most of Yellowstone National Park is inside the caldera.  A caldera is formed when a volcano spews its lava so fast that the solid land mass above the lava bed collapses inward.

Think about this: in volcanic terms, Yellowstone is over a "hot spot," and the surface features are floating on magma, or molten rock.  That's kinda spooky.  It's like camping on an iceberg - only the ocean is a gazillion degrees hot!

The atmosphere around any of these springs or geysers is of sulphur.  It's really awful.  But again, we're talkin' volcanos here. Within the past 17 million years, 142 or more caldera-forming eruptions have occurred from the Yellowstone hotspot.  Just a mere 10 or 12 million years ago in southern Idaho a caldera was formed over the Yellowstone hotspot, and it blew ash all the way to Nebraska (1,000 miles).  Take a trip to Ashfall Fossil Beds there and see evidence that large herds of rhinoceros, camel, and other animals were killed as a result of the foot deep covering of volcanic ash.  (Rhinoceros and camel?  In America?  I knew camels were brought over by the cavalry in the 1800's to be used out west, but I didn't know they were in America before that.  And rhinoceros??)  Who knew..

From mid-summer 2004 through mid-summer 2008, the land surface within the Yellowstone caldera moved upwards as much as 8 inches at the White Lake GPS station.  Read that again:  the Yellowstone caldera - the surface ground - moved upwards as much as eight inches!  That's really spooky - and did anyone tell the folks that were vacationing there then?  They certainly never told us, and we were there!

By the end of 2009, the uplift had slowed significantly and appeared to have stopped.  

Far away earthquakes have caused the geothermal features of Yellowstone to hiccup, so to speak.  Their "behavior" or timing was off for several months after quakes in California and Alaska in 1992.

This is the Great Fountain Geyser.  It's not as faithful as Old Faithful, but it is predictable.  We missed the actual eruption of Great Fountain because it was about 4:30 A.M.  I don't get up at 4:30 A.M. in 40 degree weather for nuthin' honey...

But these guys are fascinating and should put us in awe of how this planet is held together ...

How Close Do The Grizzilies Get?

I really like this photo.   What you're looking at is a teenage grizzily's "grizzle."

And this is a more complete shot of him (or her.)  Do you see the blonde stripe down his back?  That's what appears as "grizzle" and where the bear gets his name.  I've never seen a grizzly up this close before, black bear, yes.  Grizzly, no.

See our windshield wiper?  He was walking right in front of us!  He looked angry - or at least out of sorts.  No way were we gonna get out of the car, and I was busy rolling the window up.  Don't know if I've ever seen what appeared to be an angry bear on any of our travels - lots of bears, but never an irritated one...

He/she went on across the road, through the railing, and over toward the water, still looking angry.  Or maybe he just had a headache?

Through the water and on off across the meadow for a snack.

Usually I want to get out and try to make 'em feel better, massage between their ears, smooth the frazzled nerves in their back.  This guy was on his own though.  Best to let him figure out feeling better all by his boy lonesome.  Sorry, guy.  But thanks for the photo op!

How Close Do The Buffalo Roam?

Notice the buffalo just coming into view behind the side mirror...not the one to the right of the mirror, the one behind the mirror.

 See the mirror on the left and the window frame at the bottom?  I'd say that's close enough.

And he moseys right on by.

What must these buffalo think of all the people and vehicles??  I'd bet they think we're a pain.

Buffalo Don't Exist

There is no such thing as a Buffalo. Well, in America, anyway.  We DO, however, have American Bison:

I've never heard this term before, but apparently the American Bison is "ecologically extinct."  Apparently that means that they no longer roam free over the entire middle of the United States.  (Yeah, so?  What does???  Does that mean the American Indian is also "ecologically extinct?"), and yet we can find ground buffalo meat for sale in Wal-Mart and buffalo burgers on restaurant menus.  Ecologically extinct.  How goofy.   

Well, trust me, there are a bunch of American Bison in Yellowstone, and it is very, very possible to get up close and personal with them - not very SMART, but definitely possible.

This is called a buffalo jam.  We got caught in one that was five miles long.  These guys can stand six feet tall and weigh up to 2,000 pounds.  They are not shy about having temper tantrums on a car or a tourist that irritates them.  See that guy squatting down maybe ten feet in front of that lead buffalo?  The park rangers won't do a thing about that fool.  There are signs everywhere explaining that these buffalo are WILD and unpredictable.  If a child is involved a ranger will intervene, but if you're past the age of accountability, you are on your own.  I don't care that buffalo have terrible eyesight;  they have excellent hearing and sense of smell.  They can also run 35 miles per hour.  That man doesn't stand a chance if the buffalo decides to go for him...

On this trip, we saw a buffalo start to cross the road and a big ol' RV wouldn't let him.  That buffalo backed off to the side and threw a HUGE tantrum!

Pretty cheeky, huh?

Notice the interior of our door jamb on the right side of the photo.  These guys walk so close to the car that we could reach out and touch them (and I think Granpa did!)

The last time we were in Yellowstone a couple of buffalo got into a fight right in front of the car.  There's always a car right on your bumper, so there is no place to go.  If you get hit, you get hit.  When the fight was over, there was buffalo fur all over the road.  Our grandsons boiled out of the van and scooped some up.  It's at home in our "nature" cabinet.

They are magnificent and amazing beasts.  I'm so very glad we have them - there are TENS OF THOUSANDS of them on preserves and private ranches all across our nation.  But there will never again be the 3 - 4 million that were here when Europeans arrived in the 16-1700's.

Hmmm... What Do We Have Here?

American White Pelicans!  In Yellowstone?  Why did I think they were birds that only hang out at the ocean?  (Sigh.)

Once again, what I thought I knew wasn't all there was to know!   Pelicans are found on the coast and at inland waters.


People have tried to get rid of them thinking the pelican eats the fish we want - when in fact they don't (much.)  On Dyer Island in South Africa they also tried to get rid of the pelicans because the pelican doesn't get along with some guano producing birds. (You do know what guano is, don't you?  Bird poop.  It's a very valuable fertilizer.  Imagine being exterminated because you cheat someone out of their fair share of guano...)

A wonderful bird is the pelican,

His bill will hold more than his belican,

He can take in his beak

Food enough for a week,

But I'm (darned) if I see how the helican.

-- a 1920 Limerick by Dixon Lanier Merritt