This week I am back from vacation after a week spent backcountry hiking and wildlife watching in Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming. This was my 4th time visiting Yellowstone, and this time I was lucky enough to spot wolves, grizzly bears, black bears, bison (including a mother and newborn calf – just 2 hours old – right in front of Old Faithful), pronghorn, big horn sheep elk, mule deer, sage grouse, sandhill cranes, marmots, colonies of ground squirrels, eagles, and two nesting osprey. I also saw a moose in the aptly named town of Moose in Grand Teton on our final day.
It was definitely a great year to have my brand new spotting scope along with me! Through it I saw a wolf attempt to steal a bison calf from the herd, only to be chased away by an angry mob of mother bison; a grizzly bear sow with two cubs charge away a male who was stalking them… twice!… until he got the hint and left; and a large bison bull charge a black bear who decided that meant it was time to flee the area.
Below are some photos from my trip of the wildlife that was within range of my 300mm lens.
Holy cow, those sheep are awesome! All of the wildlife just lined up for perfect “Wild America” shots. Looks like a fantastic vacation!
Thank you, SL – it definitely was! We did get extremely lucky with the wildlife spotting this year, probably due to a combination of my husband convincing this non-morning-person that we needed to get up super early, and there being record snowfall in the park this year. Many of the animals still were packed into the northeast, away from the snow, where most of these photos were taken.
I’m always happy to see “prey” kick some hunter behinds. My cat managed to scratch the life out of a coyote who tried to eat him once. Coyote wasn’t too happy about it and ran away.
Hehe – that’s great, Armada!