Field Notes

Yard orniments along the driveway…

gbumann — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:16:02 +0000

Many more mule deer moving into the neighborhood of late… they were so beautiful in the morning light today… chilly though - another day starting out in the single digits.

Mule deer near the house this morning.

Flirting wolves in Lamar Valley

gbumann — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 06:37:43 +0000

Click link to see video - wolf flirts

wolf flirts

This video was shot on Feb 2nd. We had some amazing wolf viewing – and listening for that matter – two days ago as we had the Lamar Canyon wolf pack, the Blacktail and members of the Agate Creek Pack all howling around us at the same time while in lower Lamar Valley, aka little america. As it turns out the Blacktail pack crossed the road to the north but a yearling male, 777m got left behind… he howled for the pack and they to him, but from ~1/2 mile west came the howls of two Agate females – wolf 471, a 9 year old, white female and a yearling black female. The three soon joined up and went through all of the ritualized behaviors of the gray wolf dating scene – run & chase, stiff stance with perked ears and waving tail, bounding, pouncing, rearing up, etcetera… it lasted several minutes and i managed to get several minutes of video footage through the spotting scope… some of the ‘less shaky’ footage is shown here…

See us on Facebook…

gbumann — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 10:30:47 +0000

Too many bases to cover!!!!! Thought I will keep posting on the blog, it is often easier to do it on Facebook…as much as I hate to admit that I’ve joined the “social network”. If you have an account, please “friend” us so you can get the additional/more frequent updates on what’s happening out our way!

All signs point to wolves…

gbumann — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 13:09:46 +0000

I dropped little George off at daycare the other morning and proceeded toward the post office in Mammoth Hot Springs… I never made it there. As I approached the back of the Chapel I instantly spotted a group of elk holding very tight ranks atop the highest point in the immediate area – CLUE #1. When I rolled down the truck window to get a photo, I could hear the tell-tale alarm howls of coyotes in the presence of wolves CLUE#2. CLUE#3 came in the form of lot of birds, including magpies, ravens and bald eagles active to the south… and if there were any doubts left, the wolves were bedded/lounging near their kill ~1/3 mile south of the main road exiting Mammoth Hot Springs for point to the east. I couldn’t see what the kill was but it is a pretty good be that it was an elk.

: Frightened elk tightly grouped on a hill in Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone.

Alarm howls given by coyotes in the presence of wolves near Mammoth Hot Springs.

A group of 5 wolves (4 visible here) - the Canyon Pack? near their kill at Mammoth Hot Springs. By keying into the natural indicators, it was a given that the wolves were in the area before I ever saw them.

See the wolves?

gbumann — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 06:05:34 +0000

Here is a shot through the spotting scope of the Mollies wolf pack at a distance of 1.5 miles… see them? WELL, they’re right there in the middle of the scope view!!! … ok, ok, they are bedded down sleeping and look like flat rocks or throw rugs. There are 5 out of the pack of 19 visible up on a ridge in Lamar Valley. They had to be pointed out to me too so don’t feel bad. It will be intereseting to see how things play out between the area wolf packs with these intruders in the Valley as the resident packs – Lamar Canyon, Agate Creek and Blacktail Pleateau packs have 11 or fewer individuals in their ranks… in the wolf world might proves right.

: A long-distance, but not unusual view of Yellowstone wolves… sleeping after a meal at a distance of ~1.5 miles.

Alright... here's how it looked with the spotting scope turned up to high power (60x). The five wolves are circled in pink: a gray to the left, a black one to the right of the tree, and what looks like a gray and 2 black ones to the right. They were in these exact positions for hours - as is usually the case in the mid-day hours.

Nice backyard buck in Gardiner

gbumann — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 07:02:43 +0000

I was driving home the other day and did a double-take as a very sizable mule deer buck was grazing in a friend’s yard in Gardiner. It is good to see some deer following the challenges of last winter – namely a large amount of snow the killed many elk and deer, bison etc.

A mule deer in Gardiner sporting a decent crown of antlers.

Sometimes you just need to go Icefishing…

gbumann — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 18:38:37 +0000

It was such a beautiful day yesterday that I took the dogs up to a local lake and tried my hand at ice fishing in Montana for the first time. Growing up in upstate NY, it was the center of my universe each winter season. It was fun to have the auger, bucket and fishing rods back in my hands after such an absence!

Ice fishing with the pups yesterday evening as the sun was going down.

My first two yellow perch icefishing in Montana! Managed to get a few more along with a walleye before the sun set. Lots of fun. Another angler was kind enough to give me the few fish he had so i was able to come home with enough for a nice meal!

What is inherently beautiful…

gbumann — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:00:46 +0000

See if you agree or if I am a total nut (ok, maybe you shouldn’t answer that) but anyway, look at this picture of the Belvedere Torso… a classical Greek marble sculpture unearthed during the Renaissance that inspired so many of the greats and see if it doesn’t embody a lot of the elements that mirror what you may have picked out in the ‘wax goblin’ line-up in my previous post?Seeing that much of the foundation of Greek art was based on the most beautiful incarnations of nature (as best put forth by their use of the Golden Section/dynamic symmetry – per Jay Hambidge’s words) it stands to reason that if their art made use of what humans find inherently beautiful that we all would share some of this tendency when looking towards our own concepts of what’s interesting/beautiful. Those ancient artisans may have known us better than we know ourselves…

Torso Belevedere greek marble sculpture unearthed during the Renaissance

Abstracted feeling… testing selecting

gbumann — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:32:28 +0000

What’s the coolest looking shape in the line-up? These are some of the finalists from about 40-50 small wax studies – I’m looking for one to use as part of an upcoming sculpture that most conveys: adversity, dynamic change, towering strength yet surface fragility, inaccessability, protective yet perilous… its asking a lot from a shape in wax… so i may have to do another 50-100…

What you can feel for a special friend…

gbumann — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 09:13:12 +0000

First effort at a new sculpture idea… included is a poem by Dan Gerber compliments of Beth Pratt … it touches a little of what I’m try to speak of in clay… “I press my dog’s forehead to my own/and hold it till I feel her calmness
seep through,/till the restless equation I’ve made of the world/is simply the world again.”

from “Tracking the Moment,” in A Primer on Parallel Lives

no title for it yet... just a feeling spilling out in clay...