Yellowstone: Wildlife

When not at the inn, we do long “game drives” punctuated by stops to see entertaining thermal features or other big sights.  Here we are in our rented minivan:

Here is a much better picture of us at a picnic on a lunch stop:

Dale is a completely awesome guide and driver, somehow able to both smoothly transport us from place to place and also spot wildlife - either far away and thus small, or up close and thus almost already behind us.  He really made it great.  Dad kept a list of all the wild animals we spotted on the trip:

American Bison

Bighorn Sheep

Black-tailed Deer

Chipmunk

Elk

Grizzly Bear

Ground Squirrel

Mule Deer

Pine Squirrel

Pronghorn Antelope

Yellow-bellied Marmot

American Crow

American Robin

American White Pelican

Bald Eagle

Black-billed Magpie

Canada Goose

Clark's Nutcracker

Common Raven

Green-bellied Swallow

Mallard

Mountain Bluebird

Osprey

Red-tailed hawk

Sandhill Crane

Trumpeter Swan

Western Gull

I am especially enamored of the buffalo.  Not only do you really not see them anywhere else (in the wild), but they are so… big, and unique, and powerful-looking, and implacable.  Yesterday we saw a couple sitting right by the road, uninterested in the gawking tourists.  We watched them from quite close up for quite some time.  In the binoculars, they are downright monstrous.  On what I think of as “buffalo day” we saw a herd of hundreds of them spread out over a giant rolling valley, with lots of calves.  They were pretty far off, though, and not much in a photograph, which just doesn’t give the sense of scale.  Years ago, a friend of mine was surrounded by a moving herd at night, in his car, and that sounded pretty major.  I would kind of like that.  Unprotected by the car, though, I find them pretty scary at close range.  There are signs all over that overconfident tourists are regularly gored by buffalo and to keep your distance.  Yikes. 

Later we were in a classic Yellowstone buffalo traffic jam.  They just stand there in the road, probably enjoying messing with us. 

I wonder what the deal is with the buffalo, because the ones we have seen have not been avoiding the heat at all; in fact they sit right out in the sun, in their impossibly shaggy wool, and not even on the cool grass but in dirt sand-pit type of things that maybe they made themselves, maybe for dust baths.  These are called “bison wallows” and, according to Wikipedia (which I can only use now that I have internet again), may be used wet or dry, for reasons that scientists only guess at.  The fields are dotted with them.

The fields are also dotted with buffalo poop, which Jordan and Aaron find thrilling.  Here they are seeking it out.

They also love their new binoculars (presents from Grandpa), even though we think they have not actually figured out how to use them.  Aaron especially loves to describe the wonders he’s seeing, as he holds the binoculars onto his nose.  His other favorite activity is hunting (see below).  We keep explaining that there is no hunting in the national park.