Yellowstone National Park. September 2020 Bison, Wolves, Black Bears

wolves- very far away

We woke up long before sunrise in order to reach the Lamar Valley area to set up our scope in time to catch the wolves at their most active time. We followed a ranger's advice and just looked for all the other people on the hillside with scopes, and set up ours too. We watched and waited, scanning the area near the treeline across the valley. It wasn't long before we saw them! The Junction Butte pack has 20 puppies this year and we were able to watch all the puppies as several adults would come and go, checking on them and sometimes bringing food. Even though the puppies are pretty big at this point, you could tell them apart from the adults by their wagging tails and submissive stance around the adults. What a great morning!

That afternoon we drove back across the Lamar Valley and we saw hundreds of bison! Big herds of them were all over the place, including the road. It's pretty common for traffic to come to a stop because of bison in the road, we even saw a big group come onto the road and cross a bridge to reach the other side. They have absolutely no fear of cars or people. We liked to sit and watch them. They make the weirdest sound, sort of a cross between a grunt and a burp. Some of them had birds on their backs that peck off insects and things, sort of helpful hitchhikers of the animal kingdom. We saw quite a few young red bison, the little bison are red when they're born and then turn brown as they get older. I hope they are not too young to survive the upcoming winter. Yellowstone had it's first snowfall on Labor Day (the first Monday in September), so they get quite a bit of snow and cold weather in the winter.

Farther down the road we saw a lot of cars stopped by another bridge and found out that a couple of black bears had been spotted. We were on the opposite side of the river so we could clearly see the bears on the hillside. While we were watching the bears on the opposite bank, we looked down to see another black bear crossing directly underneath the area where we were standing. Apparently he wanted no part of the hubbub on the other side of the river and was taking a trail that led up a hill in the opposite direction. Smart bear! There was one exciting moment when the black bears on the opposite bank decided to cross the road and all the people on that side of the bridge scattered like crazy. 

We had a great day and saw tons of animals, including the elusive wolves we had hoped to see.