The Field Notes section chronicles our adventures abroad in a daily journal-like fashion. As the seasons sometimes pull us in multiple directions for extended spans of time, please understand if updates are not daily (or even weekly if on long adventures ESPECIALLY IN SUMMER), but be rest assured―we'll catch you up as soon as we return!

12/31/06

Out and about with this crazy Austin group in Lamar Valley again (day2/2)... An amazing magenta sunrise to the east! Skies clear with the exception of those clouds reflecting this amazing color... warmer this morning, only -5F. We had some nice views of Druid and Agate wolves, dippers, sheep, eagles, magpies, golden-eye ducks, etc. Laurie Lyman was nice enough to describe some of the identifying features used to tell the beta male of the Agate pack from another collared female which I used to make a quick memory sketch (below).

sketch of beta male, 383M, and collared female 524F of Agate Pack.

12/30/06

Today is the first day afield out in Lamar with a group out of Boise, ID organized by Barb & Jim Austin. These characters are 'repeat offenders' from last year i.e. we spent a few days together last winter enjoying the Park, skiing, wildlife watching, etc... and apparently they felt like I needed more harassment this year... so they're back :) I threatened to take them on another epoch trek in search of teepee poles in remotest Yellowstone... Dick, however, was not amused, nor convinced they were anything more than broken down tree limbs that happened to fall in a quasi-unusual manner... He made his ultimate say on last year's program by posting the following picture on the chalkboard for me to see as I walked in; a caption with an arrow pointing to the images read, "This is your instructor". HA, ha, ha.

Evidence, compliments of the Austin group (hope you're happy with yourself Dick & Natalie...), of one of my not-so-shining moments skiing the Barronette Trail with them last year in the Park... note complete face plant in upper image

We began the morning with grand plans of leaving the Ranch in search of what ever the morning had in store for us, however, we never ended up leaving the parking lot. Howling heard while still inside our cabins portended great views once the sun rose. Despite being -16F the group hang in there as we watched the Agate Creek wolf pack awaken and howl on the foothills of Druid Peak. They were on the absolute skyline as the sun rose approximately 1/2 mile away. They were howling at the Slough wolves and their newly departed male who has 'shacked up' with the Slough ladies. Before heading inside for a real warm-up from the morning chill, the Agates asserted their new-found dominance of the Valley by spilling down off the hills, across Rose Creek, up and over Ranger hill to chase the Slough wolves away to the west. We spent the afternoon snowshoeing down to the confluence of the Lamar and Yellowstone Rivers... sorry Dick wish we had some teepee poles in the area for you.... though we did see the old road grade that came down to the shores of the Yellowstone where Jack Barronette's bridge was located, where, incidentally, some of Chief Joseph's Nez Perce Indians crossed in their ill-fated flight from the US Army in 1877.

A quick self portrait done in the reflection of the wavy glass of the Lamar Buffalo Ranch Bunkhouse after everyone went off to bed... wasn't far off from bed myself, can you tell? This crowd is enough to tire anyone out :)

12/29/06

Today I helped fill in for a National Geographic tour in the Park. Our friend Leslie Stolz was not feeling well so I spent the morning with the group out in the northern range of the Park until she could rejoin them this evening. We lucked out as 7 of the Agate Pack wolves lounged around a carcass just east of the Lamar Valley Buffalo Ranch. They howled to the north as one of the Agate Pack males, a gray yearling, defected to the Slough Creek Pack. The latter has been without their alpha male for a few days leaving 7 females and no males at all in the pack. The young gray from the Agate pack seemed more than happy to fill that role for the Sloughs... There also seemed to be a lot of coyotes visible today as well; we so no less than 15 (and probably, more than 20) of these 'brush' wolves. Apparently earlier in the morning the Agates killed a coyote on the carcass we were watching them on; Bob Landis caught it all on film.

AND, AND... we now have a new 6-week-old female black lab puppy to keep Jasper company :) A friend from Moscow, ID brought her to us today along with his pup, brother, and litter mate to this new addition to the family we are calling Casey. Jasper isn't quite sure what the deal is here and is likely wondering when these little devils are leaving... little does he know, one of them is staying. Plans are in the works to make the transition as smooth as possible.

A shot of our new sweet, but sleepy pup, Casey (note Jasper is stage left looking uncertain towards all of this)

12/25/06

Merry Christmas! Jenny and I had brunch with friends here in Gardiner... it was nice to be in one place for the holidays this year. We still have a light snow that has lingered from the other day; so it is indeed white... but really windy! Jasper and I went for a run this morning along the Old Yellowstone Trail Road. We spooked about 8 pronghorn and on the way back we came upon a coyote. The 'yote was right in the middle of the road as we approached and indignantly sauntered off to the shoulder some 20 yards away and waited for us to pass. It was funny to watch his reaction as we did pass on through; he just simply stood, with his back to the wind, and without turning his head watched us out of the corner of his eye.

Later in the afternoon we ventured out into the Park and up onto Blacktail Deer Plateau. This was a last minute thing as there was only about 1 hour before sunset. It was just enough to be out and about though, even if it was driving. Jenny echoed the wisdom in deciding to make the short trek out as we drove past the elk around Mammoth campground. We also saw a few bison, bald and golden eagles, ravens, coyotes, and a bird that looked unusual but was passed too quickly to really identify it. Turns out, it was "Merry Christmas carcass" time for the Leopold wolves though. They had a kill north of the road by about a mile. At this last stop for the evening I spotted the birds and got out our new scope so both Jenny and I could look. We counted at least 13 of them.

Memory sketch of a Leopold wolf on carcass (object on the left side of the string of ravens on ground) accompanied by a bunch of ravens and an eagle, and another memory sketch of a black wolf poised on a hillside looking at the kill scene.

Memory sketch of coyote that Jasper and I encountered this morning on our jog.

12/24/06

Jenny and Jasper and I went for a ski up the Eagle Creek Drainage north of town. This was our first family ski together for this season. About five inches of fresh snow from last night made the entire area into a winter wonderland. Snow plummeted from bent bows in the sunlight making showers of wintery diamonds. Jasper was beside himself with joy. Several times throughout the morning ski he would run, jump, then dive into the snow and plow his head into the powder before rolling around on his back and squirming around like some possessed stooge. We didn't laugh... much :) Sun gleamed off the Absaroka Peaks; Ash Mountain in particular was stunning in its white cloak against that juicy blue sky.

12/18/06-12/19/06

It's time to go get the girl! Finally, Jenny comes home from her first semester at the University of Idaho in Moscow! It's 8 hours there, load up all the goods, get a night's sleep and head home on another 8 hour trek... good thing the roads were in fine driving shape.

12/17/06

Got slammed with a weather front bringing ominous clouds over the mountains to the south. Huge gusts of wind buffeted the house and reports of 100+mph gusts were reported from the Livingston, MT area about 50 miles north of us. It brought with its snow! Not much fell as far as accumulation here at the house but just to see the skies filled with flakes and the midday sun subdued by the flurries was just about enough to make one want to take a knap.

12/15/06

It's raining like the dickens here in Gardiner... what the heck is the deal? I blew like a banshee all last night and into this morning, including blowing the downstairs door open - it did seem cold in the house when awoke, and continues to buffet the house and fence. Today is a day that I go jogging, but I'm procrastinating due to the weather... so I will write up the field notes I haven't shared! I'm crossing my fingers that the Christmas snow 'dump' we seem to have gotten the past few years comes through in 2006. The radio states there is a "winter storm warning" in effect... we'll see. ...oh wait, things are starting to calm (10:00) and the rain is changing into a chunky for of "snish"... cat got out while the door was open... better go find her.

12/14/06

Went out into the Park this afternoon. I'm missing my partner... decided to leave Jasper at the house, should have brought him. I stopped at Hellroaring overlook (that viewpoint 13 miles east of Mammoth Hot Springs looking over the Yellowstone River and Hellroaring Creek). Visibility was moderate with snow squalls in the air. A few bison were visible, but THEN, once the immediate sounds calmed, a distant coyote howled, and immediately to my right, but just out of view, another 'yote' busted out with a retort. I can't say as that I have ever heard such a fantastic degree of reverberation from a coyote call. It was remarkable - it was if the snowy hillside, trees and cliffs above produced the most unmatched sound chamber for projecting this song dogs voice. With the echo, the sheer volume and modulation in its voice, I found myself frozen in place waiting for each response as others sounded off in the valley. I will add also that I am in a complete state of love, if that term may be used, with this new Swarovski spotting scope.... the clarity, crystal clear sharpness is phenomenal. I was watching bull elk about 7 miles away near dusk, with snow coming in utter sharpness - unbelievable! Just for fun I tracked a pair of ravens as they flew high overhead and on to the east for as far as they could be seen - turning up the power of the zoom as they got further and further away. Ultimately they got four or miles away, or more, before losing them... but clear and sharp as could be all the way!

12/9/06

Went looking for wolverines today... really. Friend Steve Gehman of Wild Things Unlimited has been doing some research for the Forest Service and the B-Bar ranch to monitor and identify (by means of genetic samples of hair and scat and remote cameras) any wolverines that may be inhabiting, in this case, the Tom Miner Basin area. Tom Miner is on the north-west border of Yellowstone Park and a place where Steve got photos and DNA samples from 2 wolverines last year - a male and a female. Incidentally, Jenny and I were present when Steve set up one of the cameras last year in this area that took some o those photos! We had hoped by hiking around today to find some tracks around the area, in particular, around some elk skeletons that Steve knew about from the now-closed hunting season. Turns out after ~5 miles of hiking we didn't find any tracks of wolverines (but did see a lot of elk, moose, deer, weasel, marten, hare, squirrel, rabbit, vole and mouse sign) on this day but did have a great time out and about with the three musketeers :) OH, though as we were driving home I spotted a weasel run across the road with a vole, or some such small mammal in it's mouth! Actually, even at the distance of ~20 yds I only picked out a larger black object (the vole) being followed by a smaller black object (the black tip of the weasel's tail)! The white of the snow and the weasel melded so all that was visible were those two dark forms... very neat. And just be be sure that the weasel didn't need any help a bird... probably a Clark's nutcracker, followed close overhead!

Steve Gehman takes a GPS location on an elk carcass (left) and a shot of the 3 field assistants/carcass finders Gussy, Sunny and Jasper.

View looking north from Tom Miner Basin into the Paradise Valley.

12/8/06

Drove back from Bozeman today. It ended up being one of those days of high ambition and low productivity. Late morning found Jasper and I napping in glowing sunlight that came through the sliding glass doors. And when the prospect of driving through the Park to pick up my new spotting scope in Silvergate, MT came up, Jasper and I jumped in the truck and off we went! This was the first trip into the Lamar area of Yellowstone we had had since coming back from Idaho. Bison and elk groups dotted the roadside and a coyote we spotted near Phantom Lake appeared to have lost the lower 2/3 of its tail... it looked like a little pom-pom affixed to its rump. Snow cover is thin so far and sage and rabbit brush, and even bare ground in many places, are visible. In Silvergate we stopped in to visit Bob & Holly at the Silvergate General Store; they had worked out a good deal for us on a new Swarovski 20-60x spotting scope. I rarely buy 'stuff,' leaving most of the gear research and purchases to Jenny. I'm usually quite content in my wool, cotton, crumby boots, 'Swiss cheese' gloves, battered binoculars, etc, BUT when I took a look through that scope at the black wolf pup of Druid peak pack chasing that golden eagle off a carcass along Soda Butte Creek... it made every penny worth it. The light was immaculate in that late afternoon hour; snow diamonds twinkled and the seed heads of the sage brush glowed of umber tinged with smoky ochre in the mountain light. Through that scope, I could understand what Thoreau described at the view he had of a bald eagle over Walden Pond with a new set of field glasses... as dark approached, the entirety of the Druid Peak Pack emerged from the forest to the south, but not before giving a unified chorus of howling... all 12 of them. Bob Landis was shooting film on all of this and audio too... if the automobile noise from the road wasn't too much, he should have a wonderful sequence or two out of it.

All 7 black individuals and all 5 grays trotted, rambled, and bounded out of the woods back down to the elk carcass along Soda Butte Creek only 1/3 mile from the road. All of this was clear as anything I've ever seen with this new scope - the light in the animals' eyes, snow flakes on their fur, bone and hoof detail on the 'toys' they brought back from the carcass. The big alpha male stood out clearly among the pups of the year with his bulk, blocky features and signs of aging in the few patches of gray fur. I was equally impressed with the wonderful variation in the coats of the black pups; one was jet black, others were varying degrees of sooty, mottled with dark gray and white chest markings. I have to laugh out loud every time I see those pups interact. One of them brought up an elk leg and another a piece of meat... from there on out the gave of keep-away was begun.

12/7/06

A foundry run and meeting with folks at the Greater Yellowstone Coalition... and a visit to their Christmas party and, of course, cookie sampling... thanks Liz and Erin for the invite!

12/6/06

Jasper and I went birding along the Yellowstone River this morning between 08:40 and 09:57. Jasper the Lab is generally a good birding partner but he is a little better at romping through the cover and scaring up the object of our walk with out taking a thorough count... needless to say we did see the following:

American robin – 1

Black-billed Magpie – 4

Rock dove, aka pigeon – 8

Common raven – 8 (most amazingly we spotted a raven mottled all over with white feathers. From the neck up, and the flight feathers of the wings and tail were all black but it was just dotted, top and bottom, with white-on-black markings)

Mallard – 2

Song sparrow – 1

American dipper –3

Mountain chickadee – 4

Townsend’s solitaire – 5

Bohemian waxwing - ~450

Cedar waxwing – 44 (these were mixed in among the Bohemians, but largely keeping to the outside of the treed flocks, or in small groups to themselves, and distinguishable by their smaller size, lack of maroon under-tail feathers and no white on the flight feathers of the wings; additionally several of them had orange tips to their tails (usu. yellow) and this generally results from a diet high in certain carotenoids. "Carotenoids produce red, yellow, or orange feathers. Animals gain carotenoids exclusively from the plants in their diet, including flowers, roots, seeds, and fruits. Carotenoid pigments are generally fat-soluble substances like the vitamin A in carrots from which the carotenoids take their name." (quoted from a great article in Birder's World Magazine entitled Feather Colors: What we see, online at http://www.birdersworld.com/brd/default.aspx?c=a&id=667))

Black-capped chickadee – 2

Bald eagle – 1  (a first year juvenile)

12/4/06-12/5/06

Foundry run... proofed some more waxes and brought home the new bull elk piece in bronze... looks pretty good if I do say so myself....

12/3/06

Slept in late, Jasper and Jasmine got me up to see the sunlight on Electric Peak... photo from our window...

12/2/06

Spotted ~200 elk, 60 pronghorn, at least 24 bighorn sheep and around 30 mule deer this morning while driving around to get the mail up in Mammoth with Jasper. We went up Eagle Creek Road just to 'check it out' now that the regular elk and deer hunting season is over and to let Jasper run around. The thin skin of snow in the Eagle Creek drainage recorded all the animal movements within the last several days beautifully; along one area the elk tracks literally looked as though they were pouring down over the hillsides―akin to rain streaks on a car windshield.

Images below include: top row; bighorn sheep of the Cinnabar band, left, pronghorns against the backdrop of Devil's Slide (slide is normally red but is seen here as a white streak in the right portion of the frame), middle; pronghorn buck―incidentally, the pronghorns are in the process of re-growing their horn sheaths, or "caps" as some people call them, so all the bucks all look like youngsters with small horns, no 'prongs,' lower middle; cow elk against the backdrop of the Paleozoic sediments of Mt. Everts, left, and more of the same deposits further downhill along the Gardner River, bottom; see caption there.

Above is a pair of reflective photos you might say―look for the red "x" in each shot and read on... the image to the left is a shot looking due north of the Eagle Creek drainage from the main road inside Yellowstone near the Mammoth Hot Springs campground. The image to the right was taken from Eagle Creek a few hours later, in the Gallatin National Forest, looking due south and back at the exact same spot the other photo was taken from showing the Gardiner River drainage and Bunsen Peak―which sits to the south of Mammoth Hot Springs. When one can see such long distances it is a fun challenge at times to find out just where you think you are, or were, at any one point. The strait line distance between the two photo "x" locales is just over 6 miles.

12/1/06

Jasper and I started the day with a jog into the Park along our usual route past the high school. There were 3 bison grazing at the 10yd line (two bulls and one cow). I wonder how many will leave the Park this year. They have already shot a few in Montana's bison hunt up at Eagle Creek outside of town. I worked on pulling some more waxes out of the molds for the foundry run on Monday and then Jasper and I went up to the cliffs between Mammoth and Gardiner in the Park. This is where the bighorn sheep have been hanging out... and they were again today. This time there were 5 rams chasing one ewe who was apparently coming into heat. There was one old ram, a full curl of ~11 years old and 3 younger, 3/4 curl rams of ~6-7 years of age and one little sprout of 2 years who was more or less a spectator in the whole deal. For 3 hours I watched as they ran the ewe back and forth, the big ram defending her against the younger ones, bashing heads now and then to make is point, and then running back up to stay with her. The older ram was so big that he lost out on speed when it came to an all out race for the lady. The younger rams, taking every opportunity, would try to mount the ewe before the big guy got to them. If he caught one of them he would ram them in the rear. A lot of this running around was circumvented by the big guy running the lady into thick sagebrush near the road where she was, in a sense, fenced in from all intruders but him. He would then just stand guard, licking his chops and periodically kicking her with his front lets...trying to see if she would deal with physical contact... and maybe a bout of breeding??? I watched mostly but did make a few sketches but just enjoyed the scene. There were several times, especially when they crossed the road to the Gardiner River bank, that they were only tens of feet from the truck; and with the binoculars you could see every hair, those unusual horizontal pupils, the detail of their nostrils, hooves, dewclaws, horn growth rings and the chips, blemishes, etc. that let me identify each individual ram.

11/30/06

Hey... who turned off the heat? Alright, I'll admit it, I've been living in a state of denial while traveling/living in areas of fairer climate, but it just seems like since coming back to Gardiner that winter is just, BAM, here. I was getting used to sculpting in the field and having clay that was workable - not like concrete, leaves changing etcetera. It is time to embrace the season! It also makes one feel like a bit of a wimp when I'm putting off going for a run with the dog because of the cold and I can see the kids playing on the swings across town in the schoolyard... GET OUTSIDE BUMANN! Having fun just reconnecting with everybody in town that we've missed over the past couple months like Shaney down at the Tumbleweed bookstore, Jonmikel, Rebecca, Brad and Jennifer, Renee at the Post Office, etc, etc. While hiding from cold yesterday I pulled a few waxes of a new piece and did a few sketches; among the scribbles was this golden eagle skull.

Sketch of a golden eagle skull

11/29/06

Today was the drive... with the truck loaded to the gills with all the acoutraments of life, sculpting and pets we (Jasper the Lab, Jasmine the cat, and I) drove the 9 hours back to Gardiner, MT from Moscow, ID... roads weren't too bad, but 9 hours in a car under any conditions... uhhhgg! Home safe and sound 18:12 after 512.5 miles of driving, driving, driving.

11/28/06

This is my last chance to get over to the Robert Worthman anatomy museum at Washington State University before heading back home to Gardiner, MT. Jenny will be staying on for a couple more weeks to finish up the semester and I will be taking the first of our loads of 'stuff' back to Montana. The museum was a place I had planned on spending a lot more time but time seems to be an elusive thing lately. It is just so intriguing to see these full-sized animals preserved as not only skeletons but also as tissue preps. One of the most amazing is the entire lower intestines of a horse preserved as if in situ. Other displays that caught my eye this trip were the full skeletal mounts of the ostrich, a mink (which I can't say as I remember seeing a fully articulated mink skeleton prep before... a job well done by whomever did it too!) and an American kestrel. The latter was very skillfully prepared and positioned in the most life-like and dynamic of ways... pencil sketches of kestrel and mink are below.

Sketch of American kestrel skeleton at Worthman Museum of anatomy at WSU

Sketch of mink skeleton at Worthman Museum of anatomy at WSU

11/27/06

Just got home last night from the holiday tour! We had a super visit with both my mom, Amy and Pat, in New York and Jenny's whole family in the Baltimore, MD area... time well spent indeed! Jenny and I dropped into the Spokane, WA airport amid blustery, snowy skies and made the 90 mile drive home in equally cheerful weather. Picked up the puppy boy this morning at the dog sitters and he was beside himself with joy... his parents hadn't abandon him after all :) He was so funny while flipping himself on his back and darting around in that crouched sprinter position. We spent some father/son bonding time out looking for pheasants around mid-day. We flushed one rooster without shooting and kicked up a beautiful great horned owl along one of the swales of willow and grass. The owl was very tolerant of us but the chickadees and nuthatches were not very appreciative of him.

11/10/06

Just took a walk to the store in Hamburg, NY. Near my sister Amy's house. This is suburbia, empty during the day while the workers are out. We are definitely a driving culture. I was the only human on the street outside of the group of three boys walking with their skateboards under their arms. Cars whizzed by at the four-way intersection with all the personalities and characters ensconced inside... maybe this is how the buffalo and bears feel as we pull up to them in Yellowstone; faced with a shiny moving thing they see this and not the fragile, inquisitive human inside this facade - no wonder they are glassy-eyed, or if anything, uneasy. Took my shopping list for cooking Fajitas and gathered up my groceries into one of those plastic hand baskets at the Topps grocery store. I half considered checking myself out at one of those automated, self-checkout lanes on the end of the aisle.; but opted for at least some human interaction. A register with with one customer was opening up in a line of several that were backed up past the tabloid magazines. The middle-aged woman at this register had a full round face, long dark hair pulled back in a pony tail and large-rimmed glasses; she rifled through the motions of ringing and bagging the groceries of the elderly woman in front of me, and almost as quickly, was onto mine. "She's done this a lot," I said to myself as she went through the quick, repetitive motions of bagging and scanning, scanning and bagging, with her head in her work. She looked up from all of this busyness and asked if I had a Topps' frequent shopper card. "No," I said and she wheeled around, asked the next teller and the customer there handed over the bar-coded card on a loaded ring of keys. "Thanks!," I said to all of them. I joked for a moment or two with this cashier as the credit card machine chewed on my 1s and 0s. When I prepared to leave she said..."I'm glad you came through my line today, you're the first one to smile, nobody smiles around here..." She was so sweet, not really feeling like I had done anything, all I could do was smile :) ¶Leaf blowers wailed as I returned to Amy's house- some people were starting to come home from work. The blowing of leaves is the thing to do now- having not lived in 'leaf country' in a some time-I only saw one little old woman raking. She noticed as I walked by and we exchanged a couple words of greeting. Limbs, or at least the broken stumps and limb butts, showing bright white heart wood recounted the record-breaking snow storm that hit the area in October. I saw it in the national news and Amy sent me photos and lamented at not having power for weeks, but here I was able to see, and imagine for myself the several feet of wet snow on the ground and the snapping trees. Almost every tree was scared with missing limbs, broken branches (many of which still held their green dried leaves aloft and stuck in the now leafless canopies), and stripped patches of bark where parts were tore loose. The lawn blowers ebbed and I could hear a white-breasted nuthatch.

11/9/06

Sixteen straight hours of travel. Went from 05:30 starting in Spokane, WA, to Las Vegas, to Indianapolis, IN, to Baltimore, MD, to Philadelphia, PA, to, FINALLY Buffalo, NY at 0:30 when my sister Amy picked me up. This is far better than spending days on a train or better yet, months walking beside a wagon and a team of oxen... then again I would have gotten to experience a little more for the distance traveled.

11/6/06

Jasper and I went over to do some more sculpting on the bighorn sheep lambs. Boy those little guys are neat. Lots of people stopped by to see the sheep and wondered where the "sheep are"? I thought they had big ones, those look really different from the other kind [of sheep]..." Oh well, we enjoyed them anyway.

11/3/06

Mailed our absentee ballot into Park County, MT  this morning and headed over to the WSU captive animal facility to sculpt the bighorn sheep lambs there... beautiful little devils!

11/2/06

Its a dank, drizzly day... I love it! It's one of those days in which everyone walks around with umbrellas up, hoods down, staring at their feet with just a little extra purpose to their gait. The trees have few leaves to give forth to the winds now; most of them lie in a soggy mat across the sidewalks. With every passer bye, the become one step closer to a beaten down, brown mushy paste.

10/31/06

It was grizzly bears first thing this morning. Breidi Treece was kind enough to introduce me to Charlie Robbins who coordinates ongoing research on a group of captive of grizzly bears at the Washington State University facility in Pullman, Washington. We met there at 07:30 for feeding time. As I stepped out of the truck the sound of loud hammering issued from the inside of the holding facility... it almost sounded like the rock crusher up the road at the highway construction... it was one of the grizz... ready to eat. This morning's fare was apples and deer carcasses. Breidi met me outside and as we walked further in the 'guts' of the facility, behind closed doors, the wall of putrid fish and raw flesh smell mounted as we walked... so much that after a minute or so you didn't even smell it anymore. They are getting ready to put the bears in for hibernation. By lowering the amount of food given to the bears, they naturally decrease their activity level. Ultimately, they will board up the windows, doors, cage walls and let the bears to to beddy bye. Charlie and Jennifer (a PhD student working with the bears and on the cutthroat trout/bear issue in Yellowstone Park; incidentally, she noted that the fisheries people in the Park noted that this past year was the worst on record for returning trout in the spawning stream where they keep the counting weir, though they're optimistic that the lake trout netting operations are beginning to have an effect) were kind enough to leave me inside the holding facility after Breidi went to teach class, to take more photos and do some sketching.

Door to the captive grizzly bear research facility at WSU (left), captive grizz eating deer carcass (center) and me sketching some of the bears after the research crew left.

It was tough to get good photos through the cage mesh but Breidi discovered that taking video with our digital cameras gave a much better impression. I'll figure out how to get some video on here (the website that is) sometime. Above are a couple photos and below are a few sketches I made. Interestingly, two of the bears are orphans from a "problem" bear out of Yellowstone. They are 4-year old brothers named Frank and John (I'm guessing after Frank and John Craighead who did the seminal research on grizzlies in Yellowstone), the largest of the two being 630 lbs, and their mother is located at the Grizzly and Wolf Discovery Center in West Yellowstone, MT... I've sketched and sculpted their mother too!

Bear chewing at left, another feeding (probably Peeka; center), and the constant companion of the captive or wild carnivore... the magpie.

A very powerful impression that came over me while watching these bears is how seldom anyone really get this close to these animals. And when I write this, I'm thinking back to helping handle drugged black bears in Virginia, but grizzlies are different, doing anything outdoors in grizzly country instills this in you. Even the visiting public is behind a double chain link fence here, and zoos, zoos have you separated by bars, moats and the like, but here I was standing with my nose literally ten to twelve inches away from the nose of a grizzly. She breathes, I breath―the air mixing, and moves back and forth through each of our nostrils. This smell, the smell of hot bear breath, this is the smell mauling victims cite as one of the most intense memories of their encounters. And here I was, inches apart, with only one-inch metal mesh separating us (with occasional claws or inquisitive tongue poking through) and this animal seemed so benign, so thoughtful, intelligent, pragmatic... she would then turn and continue biting through the deer pelvis on the blood-smeared floor. It could easily be my pelvis, and surely a wild bear would roll my limp bulk around with the same indifferent, thoughtful manner as I have seen them with those of elk and bison... what an interesting human psychology study it would be... I guess it's a great example of how things that spotlight our animal weaknesses and challenge our sense of security so captivate us.

10/30/06

Went for a run this morning with Jasper. I just love the smell and ambiance of deciduous trees in fall the street-side maples are casting off their golden leaves paving the sidewalks in gold. After the run we went back out to take a couple snapshots of the leaves backlit in the morning sun... and to kick our feet through 'gold' to hear it rustle. This was also the first morning that the place got cold, like-winter's-really-gonna-come-again cold; the mud puddles were frozen solid.

Autumn leaves along 1st Street, Moscow, ID, and our "shack" in the brush on 1st Street.

Another shot of our luxury suite (along with our Jasper-pup and the truck) on the hill ... in the weeds, under the trees... it suits us just fine!

10/28/06

We broke the students away from their desks today... it's Saturday after all! So, Jenny, Jasper and I and our friend Keith and his pup Gurtie went out in search of upland birds. The day was largely devoid of game birds but we spent some wonderful time out in the crisp autumn morning air. I try, as we amble over these rolling fields of tilled land what this place would have looked like prior to the white waves of settlement... it's hard to picture it. How much was forested, in what species of trees (we walk through one grove of black locust which I am told was introduced here), was it grassland? If grassland, the same grasses that form these pitiful little islands of refuge, for birds and the like, amid this cut-over agricultural desert? Along one of the grassy hedgerows Keith spots a porcupine up in a scrubby hawthorn. Neat! Jenny took a few shots. This is the first one I've seen in a few years.

Porcupine (left) and tilled wheat land of the Palouse region.

Jasper, Gurtie (the dogs), Keith and I (the humans).

10/28/06

Spent another day at drawing sessions at the U of I campus. They had a male model this week. I found that unlike animals, my working knowledge of human anatomy could be better. I have in my head the names of most of the muscles, origin/insertion, bone names, structure, etc, etc. BUT I need to start exercising this information in life. Sketch below show more blocking in of basic anatomical shapes with less emphasis on proportion.

Male nude with emphasis on blocked in anatomy shapes and de-emphasis on proportion.

10/25/06

Took a drive over to Washington State Campus to meet Breidi Treece in the animal anatomy program at the Veterinary School. She was kind enough to take time out of her day to show me around the veterinary medicine program. I was really impressed with the degree of what has been done there, specifically the anatomy and skeletal prep department... where my interests are rooted. There is also a nice collection of taxidermy mounts on campus and captive animal facility where they have a few grizzlies and bighorn sheep lambs. They are doing some wonderful mounts of skeletons (of everything from birds to horses and cows), plastination and freeze drying of organs, injections of latex into various body tissues... really neat stuff! I'm eager to revisit in order to do some sketching and sculpting from life with those sheep and bears, studying of muscle, joint, tissue, etc. mounts in the collection there, as well as learning some of the techniques and nitty gritty of how they clean up and prepare skeletons. Thanks so much for sharing Breidi!

Breidi (in the middle) with students preparing for a lab practical in anatomy (center left), anatomy lab (center right) and captive grizzly bear (left).

10/24/06

Jasper and I had a morning out together chasing birds. We drove over towards Lewiston, ID and took a 'humdinger' of a walk down into some nasty spiny knapweed-like plant to no avail. We headed back towards home and stopped at a spot a friend showed us and within the first ten yards from the road Jasper started getting birdy... seconds later we had a flush and I never even got to see the bird despite it erupting skywards only yards from my feet. Further up the drainage Jasper went into a 'tail-whippin'-nose-to-the-ground' hyper drive. From out in front of us erupted four pheasant roosters. I was able to make a clean shot on one and then watched the others make that effortless, smooth glide over the tilled fields for safer refuge... streamer-like tail feathers and all.

Leaves are falling gold and orange all over Moscow. I find some unspeakable solace in the town streets 'roofed' over in curb side maples, the smell of autumn in a place with deciduous foliage (like home in upstate NY) and the sound of each little paint-palette leaf skipping over the ground of oranges and ochre.

10/21/06

Today was one of those banner days where you have multiple firsts... and they range from the first figure drawing session on the University of Idaho campus, my and Jasper's first pheasant AND, AND A MONSTER TRUCK SHOW!!! Cultural experiences abound here in Moscow, ID.

Figure drawings from session at University of Idaho

Jasper & I with our first pheasant

The Monster Truck experience... the gang (left), Jenny and I (center) and some car crushin'! (right)

10/16/06-10/18/06

Jetted back to Bozeman for a foundry run. Delivered three new sculpture pieces for casting. Two of which, a small buffalo topping out on a small hill, a bedded bull elk (the one sculpted from life up on the lawns of Mammoth Hot Springs) I molded myself and the third, a mountain lion dragging a dead mule deer after our experiences on April 2nd of this year, I will have Con Williams do for me. The first of these pieces will be in bronze near Christmas time. Sue and John Mills and their sweet pub Tara were kind enough to put me up for the 2 night that it took to complete the trip. Snows fell that first night and we awoke to 2-3" of accumulation. This was a far cry from what my sister and brother-in-law experienced in Buffalo, NY where they had the biggest snow fall in one day than they have ever had during the month of October before... TWO FEET!!! Amy sent me some pictures and the street they live on looked like a war zone. Most of the trees still had a large number of leaves on them which held up the snow and ultimately brought the limbs crashing down all over the city. They may be out of power for a total of a week, plus.

Three new sculptures taken to the foundry this week including: a bull bison cresting hill (left), cougar dragging mule deer (right) and bedded bull elk (below)

10/11/06

Jasper and I spent the day together walking around the University of Idaho campus. We looked for an art supply store; after stopping at the 'nearly-non-existent' and hardly helpful chamber of commerce, we made it over to the University bookstore and found art supplies meager, scattered and Spartan at best. Ah well, not much different that in Gardiner...The leaves are changing and the spark of autumn air is here. Friends in Mammoth said that there still is a little snow left on the ground. Worked on a miniature buffalo sketch and the mountain lion-dragging-a-deer piece today. It's finally nice to have some time to work on some things that have been on the "to do" list for longer than is desirable. I think I'm actually at the point now where I'm able to take items off the list faster than they're being put on. Imagine that !!!

10/10/06

Got a nice email from a Sam Skinner and his wife Colleen of Bettenforf, IA. I met them this summer during the M.C. Poulsen painting class that was organized through the Buffalo Bill Historical Center. I did a watercolor sketch of Old Faithful from the deck of the Inn in the steam phase, ie. right after a major eruption, and they just happened to be visiting the Park at that time. I gave then the sketch because they seemed to enjoy the simple doodle. They just emailed me the picture below to show how it looked in the frame and mat they chose.

Watercolor sketch of steam after Old Faithful eruption

8/9/06

Moose cow and calf along roadside south of Mount Washburn.

8/2/06

Teaching "True to Life: the Art & Science of Drawing Animals with Peg Steunenberg at the Lamar Valley Buffalo Ranch. Following some classroom time we went out watching and managed to spot 4 prarie falcons bopping about the same are of the Valley flats west of the Ranch. I take it that they were juveniles based on being somewhat home-bodyish and the crazy acrobatics and chase sequences we watched between them. Also picked out among the Valley grasses, a great blue heron that caught an adult tiger salamander and was in the process of trying to swallow it... much to the salamander's dismay. I did a quick sketch to remember it by.

Great blue heron attempting to swallow a tiger salamander in Lamar Valley.

7/31/06

Had a nice day with Dave Syfert... other than getting rear-ended by a 14 year-old girl on one of her first drives out in her daddy's full sized Dodge pickup... daddy wasn't with her mind you... her 16 year-old boyfriend was, and waiting for 3 hours for the police to finally come to file a report. ANYWAY, that's another story, BUT, Dave is one of the few, the proud and amazing volunteers we have helping us out at the Yellowstone Association Institute in Lamar Valley this summer. He was interested in a tour of the Art Castings of Montana foundry I use in Belgrade, MT so he was kind enough to drive and I treated for lunch. Gave him the round-a-bout tour of the whole operation, as Dave, like most of us, never had a clue as to what goes into making a bronze sculpture until visiting a working foundry. Also picked up the Yellowstone Music Festival sign at Four Corners for Jenny. Fires burning pretty intensely in Paradise Valley right now. Smoke clogs the air to the point of disorentation.

7/26/06-7/27/06

Teaching "Lamar in the Naturalist's Tradition" at the Lamar Valley Buffalo Ranch with geologist Bob Spoelhof and artist/Park landscape architect, Eleanor Clark. While hiking the Yellowstone Picnic trail with Bob's portion of the program I spotted my second-ever coral hairstreak butterfly, several fresh Milbert's tortoishells AND my very first sooty hairstreak butterfly. All and some other species were nectaring on rabbit brush blooms. Had a wonderful viewing of the Slough Creek wolf pack in the old Druid Peak Pack Rendezvous site on the second morning. The light was amazing, the group was very amenable to sitting and watching what ever came along and we were greeted with a morning howl. Several in the group had the opportunity, not only for good viewing, but for some sketches too! The last evening we went up to Antelope Creek and the Mt. Washburn area hoping for views of the Agate Creek wolves and maybe a grizzly... alas the big show off for the night was a pair of horny blue grouse cocks and one COMPLETELY disinterested hen. They were right off the road and only 20' from us. Keith and Bob got some great photos of them. I loved the gyrations the guys went through to try to impress this lone hen (way outside their normal spring breeding season mind you)―to the point of hooting, running hither and yon with feathers a' fluffed, golden eyebrows raised and primped, and perching themselves atop any prominent rock for display/visibility... and while they had their heads turned amid the throws of impressing themselves and each other, the hen dashed across the road into the sage and kept on going! I must do a sculpture of these guys... they are just too precious! Sketch is below.

Blue grouse cock that was entertaining us near Mt. Washburn.

7/21/06-7/23/06

At Targhee Music festival! Staying with friends Ed Schauster and Melissa Pangraze in Driggs, ID. Great show and great performers from Greg Brown, Lyle Lovett, Sam Bush, to the the Way Back Bluegrass Band, Martin Sexton, and my new favorite blues artist Chris Smithers. Made some sketches while sitting in the crowd too.

Stage (left) and music goer.

Momma gets a hug (left) and the all-important ice cream stand @ festival.

7/15/06-7/18/06 Hiking loop trail around Monitor Peak in Gallatin National Forest North of Yellowstone

Jenny and I needed this hike. It was one that we've been wanting to do and was also one that we could take the dog on! Jasper voiced his approval of the idea upon hearing the proposed route... puppies aren't allowed to accompany people-types in the Park...

Day 1 We broke away from the North Fork (of Bear Creek) Trail head at 12:30 and was it hot, clear skies and... blazing hot. I felt warm enough with a pack on, Jasper was dressed in a black coat for goodness sake. Flies are terrible this year, and I mean terrible! Many locals are saying that they hadn't seen flies this bad since the 1960's and that some horse packers found that the only thing that would keep the blood-sucking swarms off of their horses was the insect killer Raid! And these were the big suckers, the quarter-pounders without the cheese―audacious enough to attack and bite any exposed flesh including ones moving hands AND even the palms of your hands were not safe. At 16:40 we called it a day, for hiking anyway, at a small lake, about an acre in size, on the west side of the ridges leading to Monitor. The placid water was buffeted by periodic gusts of wind, which we cherished, and that also collected great swarms of dragonflies and especially little blue, male damselflies; they looked like fluctuating blue stars in a mobile constellation against the dark lake waters. We sat on the shore mesmerized by the little blue fliers as they bobbed in mid air and wove their way through the emergent grasses of the shore line. Horse flies continued biting away as we pulled our clothing ever tighter around our exposed parts. I had brought my butterfly net in order to sample some of the less 'covered' areas of Park Co., MT and resorted to trying a bug elimination program i.e. I would sweep the net repeatedly over Jenny, Jasper and I as flies dropped in to harass. My hope was that as they were wiped out of our immediate air space that we would find some reprieve... for at least a few minutes. FAT CHANCE! The end of the net would become heavy with the captured weight of flies... hundreds of them, and I would 'thawap' it on the ground to kill them before setting after others still around us. It never made a dent... Alas, we had dinner in the bug netting refuge amid the lakeside pines and soon retired to our tent in whortleberry on the hill overlooking the water.

Day 2 Today would be the day that we round the north end of Monitor Peak. The morning coolness affords a wee break from the flies, but not much from the mosquitoes though... they have their sweaters on. Broke came at 08:30 with Jasper in the lead. Jasper is so proud of the fact that he just found a nice 'fresh' (probably frozen in the snow since last hunting season) elk leg that he carries along, head held high, for what must have been the first mile of the day. The trail is spotty in many places but we just continue on the course set before us and take the land forms that are most hospitable to weighted-down hikers. Once up in the alpine meadows the breezes provide for some nice reprieve from the insects and lounging sessions lengthen with ever improving vistas, and of course snacks of dried fruit and pretzels! Cold mountain freshets bubble out of the bluebell-swaddled foothills and entire drainages are gushing in wildflower color. Butterflies abound in these open sunny, flower-smattered highlands. Over the course of the day we found Colorado alpines (this is the first documented sighting of this species in Park Co., MT), Meade's sulphurs, Edith's checkerspots, phoebis parnassians, arctic blues, Speyeria sp., relict fritillaries, Mormon fritillaries, European skippers, common blues, greenish blues, California tortoishells (these were very fresh indicating that they would be the newest brood and the one that will over-winter as adults until next spring), clouded sulphurs and western whites. This was the first time this year that we have seen Meade's sulphurs and Jenny and I are both taken by the crushing orange-on-yellow blush on their upper wings and the soft velvety green color of the underside―they are an amazing animal only seen in this small area of the US Rockies and only during a brief couple weeks at the end of summer!

Jenny collecting water from inlet to lake we camped on before the days hiking begins (left) and shots of a Mead's sulphur (image compliments of Canadian Government via the Canadian Biodiversity Information Facility website).

Once on the divine leading northwest of Monitor we can see far to the north, and in all directions. Crowning the immediate vista was the looming, volcanic mass of Monitor Peak. Composed of welded ash and rock it stands like a forbidding holdout for some undiscovered culture. The north side of Monitor still has a few waterlogged snow fields... we take the chance to do a bit of glissading on our bums... what FUN!!! Click on the movie clip below...uh, hold on, can't quite get it to work yet... that Jenny shot of Jasper and I sliding down the longest of the snow fields... the are is so enchanting with all the rivulets of melting snow dropping over volcanic flag stones, wildflowers, amazing views that we decide to stop here for the day. We put the tent up against a small copse of sub-alpine fir trees... the only flat spot in the immediate area. After a dinner of "Simply Asia" noodles and sauce (don't tell but while straining the water off of the noodles I dropped the whole batch on the ground... luckily the lion's share of it ended up in the top of the pot I was using to help strain...) we walked to within ~200' of Monitor's Peak... breathtaking, we left the camera in the tent, and there aren't words to describe it... pipits and vesper sparrows sing and pikas call; pecans and chocolate chips for desert.

Jasper & I... the butterfly hunters (left), Jenny looking south from divide (center) and Monitor Peak (right).

Day 3 I awaken to sounds... something getting into the food hang? It's dark only a 'cracked eyelid' of morning is visible in the east. I tell Jenny "I'm going out to check." I get out of the tent and walk down hill in the half-light, half-naked until I can see the hang bag and rope still in position on the only weak pine limb that would accept it... who knows what the disturbacne was. I grab the camera and snap a few shots of the sunrise (best of them is below, left) and occasionally swing my head around for a look to see if the noise-maker comes back... it didn't. With breakfast within for the 3 of us we break camp at our hideaway on the bench at 08:10. We pause to enjoy the view before dropping into the drainage, snap a photo of the eastern spur ridge coming off of Monitor Peak (below center), eat some snacks and humor the lazy pup (below right).

What we awoke to in the east (left), before dropping down to Trout Lake (center), one pooped pup (right).

12:15 Eating lunch in the bug net at Trout Lake―our campsite for the night. Dining consists of remaining avocado, pepperoni, cream cheese, on a bagel with mixed chocolate chips and pecans. With our bellies content we play around the lake. Jenny takes Jasper around the other side of the Lake at the base of the cliffs for a swim, I stay tent-side of the lake and conduct some 'experiments'. My study consists of setting my watch alarm to sound after sixty seconds, and during this time, I stand stationary and swing my butterfly net continuously catching as many flies as I can, count them, throw them to the lurking trout, and repeat. I do this about 15 times and here are the count totals for a few of the trials: 24, 56, 46, 26, 43, 30, 23, 46 and 16 flies captured. More were caught when Jenny and Jasper stood with me but I didn't enter them into the "official records". Perhaps the greatest fun was in launching these flies (after squishing the ball of blood-suckers first of course) into the lake and watching the cutthroat rise to their, what I anthropomorphize as, pure delight! ¶ Later we hike up to that spur ridge shown above, just from the other side, and take in the view/surroundings. It appears to be one huge dike (a place where magma has filled a crack in the earth, cooled, and the surrounding rock has subsequently eroded away leaving the more durable igneous rock as a prominent fin-like formation) of magma. Every exposed patch is entirely composed of perlite obsidian―that small, grainy, chunked up variety of volcanic glass that is absolutely worthless for tool making. We pick out a neat looking little bench on the south side of the terminus of the dike as a cool looking lunch spot for a future trip, maybe even a camp site o' way up on the mountain. We find a clump of mountain goat hair on one of the bushes along the narrow spine trail of the dike.

Looking along the magma dike forming the ridge to the east (on left) and a wonderful white bark pine girded by lupine and Indian paintbrush (right)

Three travelers on the ridge (left) and view down, and to the south (right), where our tent is... see it, next to that little lake down there??? Don't worry, neither could we...

From here is was down, down, down, back to camp. I cooked dinner (chicken and beef stroganoff lala with pasta) and Jenny got water, Jasper helped as always. Just before dark a brief blitz of 'weather' came over the mountain long enough to give us a stunning rainbow before bed, reading, and slumber.

Day 4 The final frontier before we re-enter civilization. It's a bug-filled breakfast―both inside out. Our outer exteriors are caked in mosquitoes, AND inside as we consume what Kamikazes crash land into the milk of our cereal. Like horses moving for the barn; break camp at 07:15, we waste no time making miles; I think it was 12 or 14 to the truck. No photos, few notes taken, some sections of trail we've hiked before, some not, walk, walk, walk, snacks nearly gone, thoughts of greasy cheese burgers dance in our heads. Back at the trailhead at 11:15.

7/11/06

Jasper and I went for a run this morning while the air was still cool. Still tallying up and finalizing our Yellowstone Butterfly count results and catching up on correspondence as well as working on 4-6 new sculptures.

7/706

While driving a group back to the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch after a morning in the Park I spotted a bighorn sheep ram that had been hit on the road in Yankee Jim Canyon north of Gardiner. As I came back through the highway department was loading it into their truck - so I stopped and asked where they were taking it and if I could run home to get my field kit (measuring tapes, calipers, camera and data sheets, etc.) to take measurements of the ram. They told me where he would be an that they would let the Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks wardens know that I would be there so they didn't think that I was trying to swipe the head or anything (it is against the law to pick up, remove or possess skulls of bighorn sheep, whether naturally deceased or not, in the state of Montana). A quick drive to Gardiner and back found me back at the carcass dump site and I was in the process of taking some final photos of the animal, following a full suite of measurements, when wardens Jim Miller and Kevin Arnold showed up to remove the head.

Roadkill bighorn ram from Yankee Jim Canyon

7/6/06

Butterflying up at Eagle Creek north of Gardiner. Found: ruddy coppers, cabbage whites, greenish blues, silvery blue, common wood-nymph, and a Melissa blue.

7/5/06

Osprey at Tower Falls are have 3 chicks in nest.

7/4/06

Jasper and I went on a quest for moose bones. According to Dan Hartman, there was a carcass of moose that was fed on by the Druid Peak wolf pack 2 or 3 winters ago... long enough that we should be able to pick up a nice set of naturally cleaned bones. Things were nice and cool, droplets of water still clung to vegetation from the rains of last night. Jasper dashed and darted, sniffed and peed, I ducked and crawled, climbed and scrambled all over the place the moose 'should have' been. You learn that anytime someone says something to the effect of, "just go down along 'such-and-such' a way and you can't miss it," you're going to miss it... Needless to say we had a wonderful morning out together, no moose bones but a grizzly had marked the usual rub tree that they use when working through this area (also confirmed by several piles of scat including one further up the trail that was completely filled with whitebark pine nuts); brown hairs stuck out from the burnished lodgepole pine bark.

7/3/06

Amazing fragrances wafting about... it just rained in Lamar Valley. The scent of sage and wet Douglas fir are irresistible. People in places like London and New York would pay money for this kind of stimulation in a bottle. Unfortunate for them this stuff can't be contained by glass... hell these valleys can hardly hold it in. Along with the rain shower comes an astonishing sunset; dazzling and ominous skies are undershot with sanguine peaches and orange, bloodshot oranges rim along the western horizon, accented with a starburst of sun in the middle, rain coming down to the north and west in drawn out veils; their backdrop is lilac-colored and powdery ultramarine blue...

7/2/06

Went butterflying at Eagle Creek north of Gardiner in preparation for the Yellowstone Butterfly Count. Found: Greenish Blues, Common Blues, Becker's Whites, Hayden's Ringlets, European Skippers, Small Wood-nymphs, Cabbage Whites, Acmon Blues, Purplish Coppers, Clouded Sulphurs, Melissa Blues and an unidentified swallowtail... a big one too!

7/1/06

Took Jenny out to the Buffalo Ranch so she could take Hannah Hinchman's nature journaling class entitled "A trail through leaves". The bison are starting to bellow. In fact, one bull started in bellowing as he transitioned into grazing (sounding off his manly opinions must not have been that crucial) as his vocalizations became muffled as his mouth filled with grass. Another bull sidled up to a Wyoming sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata wyomingensis) and started licking it. I couldn't quite figure out if he was licking the rain water off, thinking about eating some of it OR if maybe a female had urinated on it, and as a result arousing his interest? Pronghorn buck was seen scent marking on a cow parsnip plant with his sub-auricular gland (a gland nestled within that dark sideburn-like patch of hair below the ear and on the angle of the jaw). He then at one of the leaves before departing.

6/30/06

Took a group from the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch out for some morning wildlife watching in the Park. We spotted a black bear ~1/2mile west of Roosevelt Lodge, spotted 3 Agate Creek wolf pack pups and a pair of mating grizzlies on "Honeymooner Hill" north of Mt. Washburn (for what ever reason, grizzlies like a spot with a view when they're courting and so many have been seen courting/copulating on this one open ridge coming down off of Washburn that it has been nicknamed "Honeymooner Hill" the the wildlife watchers). This particular pair almost looked like a sow with a 2-year old cub. Closer inspection revealed that this was one super hefty male with a lighter colored and much smaller sow.

6/29/06

Bill Wengeler said that they spotted 11 Druid Peak Pack wolf pups (7 black ones and 4 gray) at the rendezvous site in Round Prairie adjacent to the Pebble Creek campground, only 9 were visible tonight.

6/28/06

Took one of the Tauck tour groups out today (I acted as one of the step-on guides for the day). Managed to get a look a lone member of the Hayden Valley wolf pack in the midday heat. This one wolf was out and about chewing on the remains of a bison to the east of the road - visible to the north of what locals call the "Grizzly Pullout". As the heat came and went, the wolf fluctuated in and out of a mirage-like state.

For the first time ever I just listened to an eruption of Old Faithful; not just the geyser, but all of the human commotion and ambient sounds. What follows is just a cliff notes version of the auditory experience as jotted in my field notebook as peopled waited for the eruption: "Heel," a man yells at his pit bull, "Bark, bark," says as deep voiced dog followed by a high pitched, and assumed to be, smaller dog, a child starts crying, a German-accented woman is speaking, I catch a snippet, "...well the bison were here first... so..." then a collective "Whoa!!!" (geyser starts to erupt). Some clap, some break out in song, several applaud as at the end of a good movie.

6/27/06

Drove down to Old Faithful with Brad Bulin this morning. White passing through Willow Flats south of Mammoth Hot Springs we spotted a lone gray wolf, probably of the Swan Lake Pack. With the morning light striking the animal and the willows around it, all looked to be doused in a brilliantly lit glaze of honey. I also got a very, very quick glimpse of a weasel at Fountain Flats. It darted to the road shoulder, and as quick as it did, it was back out of sight. The view was long enough that i could make out its distinct brown/white, two-toned markings.

6/26/06

While out with a group today we spotted a badger... in high gear, running through the sage brush south and east of the Buffalo Ranch in Lamar Valley with a ground squirrel in its mouth!

6/24/06

Today was a day we had hoped to go up to the Boulder River for the weekend... as the way the world goes we were too late to get out on time decided to stay close to home. All was not lost however, we joined up with friends Rick and Carolyn Wallen for a canoe ride down the Yellowstone River. As is turns out, this was the maiden voyage for all of us this year. We took Jasper along for what we realized was his second voyage - ever! He succeeded in making it a memorable one as we rolled the canoe in the middle of the River only minutes into the float.... and let me tell you... the water is still pretty darn cold! Jenny swam to one shore with the dog and I stayed with the canoe and landed on the opposite side of the River. With Rick and Carolyn's help I emptied the boat and paddled over to pick up Jenny and Jasper. Life vests are great things I must say. I think that Jasper would even agree that the jack-o-lantern orange doggie vest he continually tries to rub off on the bushes adds a nice bit of floatation to his little, black Labrador 'bod'. We were all quite envious as we paddled past LaDuke hot springs (which empties into the river over a hummock of orange and green algae-covered travertine) as an otter paralleled us in the peaks and troughs of standing waves... playing, ie. surfing in and over the rolling waters. ¶Rick and Carolyn were kind enough to endure one more rolling of the canoe by us (this time to Jasper's credit, it was not his fault) and the chase of the boat that neither of us were quick enough to grab. Stunning, bright sunny day all around otherwise. We dried up by the take-out at Yankee Jim Canyon :)

6/23/06

Had a great outing with the Mountain Sky Guest Ranch group today in the Northern Range of Yellowstone. Though bears and wolves eluded us... and nearly everyone else that day, we had some great views of bighorn sheep and their lams along the cliff edges of the Narrows Canyon of the Yellowstone River, downstream of Tower falls. In fact, the sheep were right above the peregrine falcon nest where I could make out at least three of the creamy white puff ball chicks. I do hope that all 4 were still there. The adult falcons must have been off hunting or having some personal time away from the kids. Unfortunately, it appears that there is only 1 of the sandhill crane chicks still alive at Floating Island Lake. ¶One of the neatest things of the morning was watching a mule deer doe chase a coyote off! As we pulled past the driveway to Roosevelt Lodge, one of the sharp eyed folks in the bus spotted the deer. As we took a closer look it was apparent that she was intently focused on a particular section of trees. With ears cocked forward and all her powers of observation trained, we watched in the same general vicinity. Moments later a coyote sprang from the trees and through tall grass. At that point the deer gave chase running the coyote across the road for a total chase of over 100yds... she must have had a fawn there... Pronghorns had their fawns up and about for the first time that I've seen. The fawns of this fastest land mammal in North America are now out of the "hide-and-seek" stage of life and are making their first go at moving with the herd. They are still quite vulnerable but should be outpacing all competition before long!

6/22/06

Out with a fun group of writers from around the country for the wildlife portion of their Yellowstone visit through the Park's concessionaire Xanterra. Sounds like the sighting that we had of the lone gray wolf walking up to, and quickly darting away from a very hefty grizzly was not observed by any other folks intently watching the Antelope Creek area.

6/21/06

Went running with Jasper this morning... its so nice and cool... almost chilly on could say. Working on the life sized wolf 42 today. She's coming along nicely, as is 2-4 other pieces.

6/20/06

Worked on the life sized wolf  today for a couple hours after running Jasper for a little while. I taken to playing fetch with him using a sling to throw his rubber ball... the kind like in the tale of David and Goliath. Some time ago my elbow started telling me that all this ball throwing wasn't good for it. It turns out that not only is the sling nicer to my elbow but the ball can be thrown much further - 2-3x further (paced off, the distance went from ~40 to ~110 paces with the sling), and with a lot more speed. It took a little while to get the hang of it again (I made one when I was younger and did a lot of rock throwing with it) but now that I've got it down I can throw that thing faster than he can run in an overhand, underhand, or side arm swing motion. The best part of it that instead of spending what ever it costs for one of the plastic ball throwers from the pet store, I made this sling out of a strip of leather we had laying around and 2 old leather boot laces... AND it works even better!

6/19/06

Out in the Northern Range area of the Park today teaching a tracking program for the employees of Xanterra―the Park's partner that runs the hotels. It was a banner day indeed. While at Lava Creek walking around looking at the elk sign among the trees (and swatting mosquitoes... boy, are they out now that we have some moisture this year!) Nancy found a obsidian projectile point (photo below) lying in the dust of a buffalo wallow. We removed it in this case to take to the Park archeologist to keep it from walking off in some tourist's pocket, and to get some information on it, as well as to document its location. UPDATE: I turned the projectile point over to Ann Johnson who told me that this point represents a small example of a McKean group artifact. The McKean Group is the second most common type of point (after the Pelican Lake Group) found in Yellowstone and dates to ~2500-4000 BC. When I asked Ann what obsidian glass may have been used for this point (or knife as the straight side may indicate that it was hafted on a handle and used as a cutting tool after its days of being thrown on the end of a spear, via and atlatl or throwing stick, were over) she said that ~90% of the obsidian artifacts in Yellowstone trace back to Obsidian Cliff between Mammoth and Norris Geyser Basin, ~6% comes from Bear Gulch, and the remainder is a hodgepodge of sources including Jackson, Teton Pass, and Pack Saddle Creek. ¶Right around that time we spied a wandering garter snake, then another, then one that had a huge 5" swelling in its body (wonder what it ate?) and as we looked closer we spotted 3 more in amongst a short willow bush (all of these snakes were within a 20' radius); at least 2 were females judging by the size of the one and one that I picked up and sexed as a young female. ¶We spotted 6, and potentially 8, black bears in the Tower area, and while tracking near Rainey Lake we found a very dry, but still very active, tiger salamander in a dusty buffalo wallow and got to see what gait he was using after my short field lecture on that very subject. If this all wasn't enough, I took the group down what I call the "bear highway" near Rainey Lake. After going through a seek & explore session, and a field lecture on travel corridors, animal use of the local landscape features, choice of trails, bear markings on trees (complete with my demonstration of how a bear rubs is back on the tree to leave its scent as well as how they scratch and bite the bark of these trees) we came back to the bus to see a brown-colored black bear walking down the "highway" we were just on! The bear walked exactly as we inferred from the sign, AND went over to one of those trees and rubbed its back! WOW, now how's that for a real life demonstration of what we imagined from all those tracks, scats and marks on the trees.

Obsidian projectile point found in Yellowstone.

OH, and then who could forget this AMAZING RAINBOW THIS AFTERNOON!!!

5/31/06

Foundry run... picking up new pieces, proofing waxes and having some castings mailed out...

5/30/06

BABY SANDHILLS HATCHED ON FLOATING ISLAND LAKE! I got to see the first colt (as sandhill chicks are called) only minutes out of the egg AND the second egg was pipping! When I came back through Dale and Elva Paulson, who'd been watching the entire show, reported that the other egg had hatched while I was in Lamar getting some buffalo 'hair-shedding' reference video. They had caught a glimpse of the other colt lying on its back, half-way out of the egg before momma nestled back down on them... HOW WONDERFUL!!!! Word also has it that the peregrine falcons are now hatching too!

5/28/06-5/29/06

A backpacking trip in search of a cougar carcass! Friends told Jenny about a cougar found dead near their campsite up the Hellroaring Creek area. Since I'm working on these cougar pieces, I've been needing some measurements of cougar skeletons, esp. of the spine and tail when fully articulated... so off we went with scant directions and the weather cooling, cooling, cooling. When leaving on the 28th weather predictions were for a "winter storm warning" for the region. Luckily we were only 'graupeled' on a few times throughout the entire ordeal. Graupel is a familiar type of snow to us all, sometimes just referred to as "pellet" snow, that results from a snowflake colliding with a bunch of super-cooled water droplets as it falls, in the process, loosing all of its outwardly 'snowflake' appearance and coming to look like a little round bead of snow. The neat this was that as the clouds came over us, and we could see them moving our way from a great distance as we hiked, each storm would bring its own uniquely sized graupel pellets ranging in size from minute, BB sized pellets all the way up to some the size of pencil erasers (the kind on the end of a #2 pencil).¶ We finally hit camp and set up our tent and bear hang to keep the grizz and black bears out of our dinner and breakfast, coincidentally, a grizzly and her cub walked down the trail right past our camp not that long before we did as evidenced by the tracks in the mud (see picture below). With 'home base set up we marched off in search of the fabled dead cougar. Once at the supposed spot we realized how big an area we would potentially have to search to find this thing. Directions said that it was able to be smelled from the trail, but with the amount of carcasses all over the northern range of Yellowstone after this past winter, a lot could be smelled from the ~1000 miles of trails throughout Yellowstone. It was purportedly near a dead elk and so the 'sniff' factor should be pretty high. Walking in ever widening circles we found something stinky... I called Jenny over because she has a much better nose than I - perhaps it's been 'burned out' over the years of investigating carcasses, road kill, mixing animal attractants, etc. "Here's an elk" she reported from the other side of a knoll. We were staying close because any time you're looking for carcasses in grizzly country, you want to have backup packing bear spray. I surely was an elk, a big bull, but not in the company of a cougar; the search went on. Ranging a bit further I entered a spot where it really stunk; I didn't need Jenny to confirm on this one. Sure enough there was a dead bull elk and about 10m away was the dead cat! The report that it had been dead only a few days was a somewhat erroneous as the thing was nearly fully rendered down and writhing with maggots, though still largely covered in skin... BUT still articulated! Yeah! I pulled out my trusty data sheet after snapping some photos and handed it to Jenny. She would be my scribe and body guard as I pulled out my tape measure and calipers, and 'thwapped' on my latex gloves. Jenny stood well back away from the scene as it was the epitome of rancid... I've certainly been around worse but the combination of the odor and the maggots kept her at bay while I barked out measurements. It was a sub-adult, probably just dispersed and it likely died this winter, but the rear end was too decomposed to ascertain sex. It was unclear what role the elk carcass played in all of this... was it a food source for a starving kitten out on its own for the first time or did another predator kill the cat as it came in to feed on the dead bull? I could not see any marks on its body indicating the cause of death as it was 'too far gone'. My hands were freezing after the requisite 30-40 minutes of measurements/observations and so much the better as it was start to snow even harder now.... Time to get rid of the stinkies and have some dinner.¶ Some flowers managing to bloom that I didn't see on the backpacking trip in the general area included baneberry, glacier lilly and green gentian. Also stopped to age a sawn Douglas fir log for a break along the trail on our way out. The upper end where the cut was was ~35' up on the tree and was ~29" in diameter; I counted >330 annual rings of growth.

Above: I'm getting 'graupeled-snowed' upon on along the trail

Left to right: Jenny's boots and grizz scat on trail ~1/2mi from our camp, grizz tracks in mud, bull elk carcass along trail, and my trusty body guard/data recorder - Jenny

Above: The fabled dead cougar. It turned out to be a sub-adult of unknown sex with a broken upper right K-9.

5/27/06

I had a Personal Ed-venture with the "crazy ladies four," this morning. Nancy, Claire, Maria and Theresa from Boise (and this is said 'boy-see'... there is no 'z' in Boise, thank you very much)... what a hoot these gals are! Their request was to see bears and dippers... it's about time that someone gave those cute charcoal-colored birds a look. We not only found a grizzly way up on Specimen Ridge in Lamar Valley but we spotted 35 species of birds including (unfortunately no dippers as the rivers were quite high): western meadowlark, red-tailed hawk, northern flicker, mountain chickadee, ruby crowned kinglet, white-crowned sparrow, American robin, red breasted nuthatch, yellow-rumped warbler, mallard, sandhill crane, coot, yellow-headed blackbird, chipping sparrow, ruddy duck, pie-billed grebe, common raven, green winged teal, vesper sparrow, Brewer's sparrow, black-billed magpie, mountain bluebird, European starling, pine siskin, golden eagle, bald eagle, Canada goose, dark-eyed junco, common merganser, Brewer's blackbird, American kestrel, song sparrow, great horned owl, osprey and peregrine falcon. Theresa and Maria's sharp eyes picked out an elk calf on the other side of Lamar River from us... this was my first elk calf of the year! New blooms for the year also included some silky phacelia around the Petrified Tree, sticky geraniums and false Solomon's seal. The peregrine female is still on her nest... looking very sleepy and tired of sitting I imagine. Further downstream of the peregrine nest was a bighorn ewe with her 5 day-old lamb.. this was also a first of the year for me and the group! Just as we were about to leave the overlook of the peregrine's nest I spotted a raven feeding on something on the other side of the road in the woods. As I pointed this out to the "gang" a voice from the back said, "are you sure that's a raven, that's a really big raven?" Turns out that only 10 yds to the left of the raven was a black bear and her 2 cubs-of-the-year waltzing into the scene! What a thrill! We watched with glee as the cubs wrestled and rolled, climbed and taunted their mother and each other. At one point the one cub was not listening to mom and as she went after the little tyrant he/she fled up the closest Douglas Fir tree... mom went up after it, part way, enough to get a paw on it and pull the little monster down and give it a bear version of what we imagined to be a spanking. All in all, the day was put in no better terms than "wicked brilliant," to put a Northeastern ism together with a British ism :)

5/26/06

It's one of those early morning drives through the Park. I'm going to Lake Village to meet some past students for a personal ed-venture through the Yellowstone Association. There is some small slice of serenity to being out and about in the Park before most visitors are even consciously aware of the new day. In the predawn light I spy an area of incredible blackness along the shoulder of the road near the upper Mammoth Terraces- it's a black bear. It is alone, as am I, no cubs, no time even taken to see if she might have them stowed in a thicket nearby. It looks at me as I drive past, I do not slow or stop as we are both on are morning errands and no need to interfere. Between the stretch running between Norris Geyser Basin and Canyon Village, the most amazing morning light graces the sky - unspeakable, but I scribbled my impressions in my notepad as I drove in a crude attempt to preserve this scene for my thoughts - so they aren't muddied in with all the other amazing sunrises that have ever been or ever will be.  They are transcribed here from the wobbly script of someone writing when they were supposed to be driving: "05:47, Driving to Lake, Soft edged clouds the color of sun-cured lilac blooms. Some quench the citrus salmon of the rising sun over Canyon and fading into ever darker shades of opaque." "You could say this was painted with deft strokes from Charlie Russell's palate," I think to myself.

The rest of the day is wonderful in the way it could only be in Yellowstone. I met Scott and Dean, along with Scott's brother Ken and his wife Pat, all from California. We drive by the acrid stench, some might say aroma, of Mud Volcano and into the green expanse of Hayden Valley. Sun gilds the sage and a young grizzly is in view not far from the second pullout. We stop, set up spotting scopes and she is close, REALLY CLOSE in the optics, to the point one can see the reflections of light on each foot's five claws, we have full framed views of the pigeon-toed gate in the front, and the glistening wetness of her hind foot pads as she walks through the organic mud. Her feet, and those of all bears are beautiful things... one of Jenny's "favorite things in the world" are bear tracks, especially "grizz tracks". Seeing the feet that's making them is doubly delightful. It's almost like seeing a human newborn's feet... we all have feet, we've scores of feet, yet the impression that we get when seeing the minute perfection of new toes, heels and arches custom built to infancy, we have to prod and admire each and every time. Deprived of prodding this bear's supple pads, we're left only to admire. ¶ Further ramblings take us all the way around the lower loop of the Park road. We stop at Old Faithful to have lunch and skip the coming eruption of Old Faithful itself, for the distant chance of seeing Grand Geyser erupt. The eruption prediction was for ~1pm and with a window of opportunity of 1.5 hours on either side of that time we were hopeful but realistic as we walk up to the nearly-full benches in front of Grand's overflowing, fountain-style pool. Not 5 minutes after planting ourselves the steaming pool of water before us shot skyward in enormous spurts of super-heated water! This is one of my, if not THE, most favorite geysers of mine. It only goes off every 7-8 hours, but unlike Old Faithful, it will erupt to heights of 150-180, with some even approaching 200' high (compared to OF's 120-130'). To top this off, instead of eruptions lasting 3-5 minutes, Grand will stay 'airborne' for 9-12 minutes. This eruption lasted only 9 minutes but was more than we could have hoped for. We all stood spellbound as the alabaster spray shot forth. With necks craned we were in awe, some cheered, most were speechless. I squinted my eyes, sitting back as far as I dared and looked at it from as many different perspectives as my two eyes could muster. At one point I believed the jets of water to be escaping white wraiths, mouths slung open in rumbling shrieks, and arms shot upward and out as others like it launched themselves over their fellow escapee's backs, past their flanks and through their aprons... what a spectacle!

5/25/06

The spring carpet just keeps a'rollin' out! At Eagle Creek just outside of Gardiner this evening we spotted the first blooming sticky geranium, irises and lupine.

5/23/06

Amazing double rainbow over town of Gardiner this afternoon! Picture taken from our deck.

5/20/06 - 5/22/06  Taught a backpacking class in the Park for the International Wolf Center

Day 1 in the field backpacking into Hellroaring Creek area. Rain, chunky, poke-you-in-the-eye, soak-you-then-leave rain fell as we attempted to leave the trail head. With full rain gear on we departed to have it only clear up before we even reached the Hellroaring suspension bridge over the Yellowstone River. Spring, and one could nearly say summer, has come to the Park. I noted blooming flowers as we walked; our group of 6 students, cheerful that this leg of the trip was down hill. Blooms spotted included: Forget-me-nots, woodland and Virginia strawberry, shooting star, pasque flower, large-flowered phlox, puccoon, arrow-leafed balsamroot, western spring beauty, sugar bowls aka. virgin's bower, Arabis nuttalli, Oregon grape, prairie smoke, valarian, pussytoes spp., 9-leaved biscuit root, dandelion (Taraxicum levigatum), heart-leaved arnica, bluebells, yellow and blue violet spp., serviceberry, chokecherry, woodland star, and death camas. Some of the firsts of the year for butterflies were seen once the sun came out too; they amounted to a very, very fresh silvery blue (so fresh out of the chrysalis that its wings were still a little crinkled) and a sara orangetip. The group was happy to reach camp... especially since we were within 1/2 mile of it yet had to hike all the way upstream to cross at the stock bridge over Hellroaring Creek (as the creek was raging with melt water), as opposed to fording at the usual spot. With tents set up and dinner in our tummies, we were lulled to sleep by the trundling of boulders amid the gush and white noise of the aptly named "Hellroaring".

Day 2 We're base-camped which means that we could leave all the heavy stuff and walk with a lightish packs, water and our lunches. This is a wolf ecology back pack so we marched up the foothills of Hellroaring Peak to do some viewing with our scopes. Wolves eluded us but we did find the most wonderful scene across the valley as a mother black bear and two cubs-of-the-year gamboled about and climbed the nearby aspens. One cub was black and the other brown... mamma grazed throughout the entire time that we watched. Elk carcasses abounded. Dead elk from this year's harsh winter-kill season lay strewn about, some with antlers on, some with antlers shed, some others still with their antlers sawn off or blemished with a hatched by the Park rangers so no one would swipe them.

Day 3 Hiking out. A half of a mile from camp a Melissa blue butterfly alights near the trail, very fresh, its metallic blue eye spots shimmer in the morning light... what a thrill! A common ringlet lumbers by on its rounded orange wings... The group is glad to be heading back, and sad to leave, as am I. You just get into the feel of being on an hourless clock and a numberless calendar and then all of a sudden, the beckoning of the outside world draws you back to our self-imposed "reality" again. True, many are ready to drink non-iodized water, sleep on cushy surfaces, eat hydrated foot, and not worrying about a wild creature careening through ones silk sheet shelter in the middle of the midnight blackness, but we still somehow miss it. Though we found little success in watching any wolves in the backcountry (Janet from Boston may have spotted one last night) the respite from roads, walls, pavement, and agendas proved to be more than enough... I know I'll miss the lapping of creek-run melt water on basalt cobbles this night.

5/19/06

Someone yelled "bear!" from the back of the Yellowstone Institute bus. Looking into the flat expanse of Lamar Valley a large dark 'bear-form' was loping along to the west not 1/4 mile south of the road. It was dark, really dark and my mind initially leaned towards 'black bear' but once we got the bus turned around and the scopes out, it was clear that with the hump exceeding the rump in height along its back―it was a grizzly. Other cars immediately gave chase from the road―paralleling the bear that obviously was intent upon crossing at some point. We stopped short of the auto mêlée and once the bear was spotted to the north, and we felt it safe to leave the safety of the bus, I gave the signal to hop out and man the spotting scopes. The bear took powerful strides through the sage sniffing ate the air periodically; was it sensing the impending drop of delectable elk calves? ¶ This was a class for the International Wolf Center out of Ely, MN. A few of the group had not been to Yellowstone in many years and for others this was the first trip. We later got some distant views of 3 of the "Mystery" wolf pack from Slough Creek so that if the group, which was here principally for a backpacking trip, didn't see wolves in the backcountry, we could say we've seen them in some form. Lounging as wolves so often do late in the morning, the excitement peaked at the raising of a tired head, a stretch, and the ultimate crescendo of sleeping wolves... the stand and lay back down move.

5/18/06

First choke cherries blooming in Gardiner, MT.

5/17/06

Jenny reminded me to 'deal' with the deer head that I had soaking on the front deck―it was stinking to high heaven. Thank goodness that we don't have really close neighbors, or at least ones that care that I have carrion soaking on our deck. This was the buck that I harvested this fall. I wanted to keep the skull as this would provide a nice comparison to the white-tailed deer skull I have from back East. The down side of this, that Jenny was alluding to however, was the part of the cleaning process that requires the soaking of the skull in a bucket of water for a couple weeks. I incidentally left the skin on the head which was amplifying the stink and preventing the proper 'soak factor' from being achieved. SO, that night I donned latex gloves, employed my sharpened fillet knife and removed the skin/ears/eyes and tongue, etc. from this 'specimen'. As my dad used to say, "it was enough to gag a maggot"... and this is no departure from the truth. All in the name of better understanding an animals elemental structure and form, I flensed off the stiff, fly-larvae-ridden skin of the buck's face and neck. Once done I took the scraps strait up to the National Forest and returned this serving of biomass back to the land from whence it came. Later soaking of the skull should proved to cause a few less grubs to dry-heave...

5/15/06

Jasper and I just finished a morning run down the Old Yellowstone Trail Road. Things are calm and cool in compliment to the felt greenery that still covers the Gardiner desert. More out of town plates are coming through town every day. Violet green swallows are now careening through the air after the abundance of caddis flies along side their cousins the two-toned tree swallows. Friends Dale and Elva Paulson said that the ravens in the nest at Golden Gate in the Park have hatched!

5/14/06

Jenny, Jasper and I did a whole lot of very little today. We did take a walk in the upper reaches of Eagle Creek now the Forest Service Road is open. We no more than reached sunny meadow with a view of the Gallatin Peaks and Mammoth Hot springs and the Mt. Washburn Range in the Park and we plopped ourselves down and soaked in the sun like 3 lizards. Understandably, Jasper was the most energetic of the group, and insisted upon rambling about in the sage brush after bones, hooting blue grouse, splashes in the ephemeral ponds and rolling about in the dry grass in his own version of a K-9 'simple fit'. I made a couple small pencil sketches and for the most part we just laid around in that early morning sun until Jasper prodded us to return home with the tines of a sizable mule deer antler he'd found.. As for the rest of the day, Jenny did garden work and I started a couple paintings.

Sketch of the Gallatin Mountain Range inside Yellowstone Park from Eagle Creek to the North: from left to right are Trilobite, Mt. Holmes, Dome, and Antler Peaks.

5/13/06

Had a wonderful morning afield with a Legacy for Learning program through the Yellowstone Association. I was fortunate enough to share the morning with 3 of our board members and seven guests from as far away as San Diego, CA, Washington D.C. and Oklahoma. Annette, one of our guests had taken a driving route all the way through Nebraska in order to see some sandhill cranes but didn't get to see on until we stopped at the nesting pair on Floating Island Lake. Sarah from California had never seen a bear in the wild so it was pretty neat when we had a chance to watch a lone black bear, that looked like a dispersed yearling, grazing in the deadfall timber along Elk Creek. The luck of the group paid off again as we spotted a single gray wolf near the old Druid Peak Pack Rendezvous site in Lamar Valley, and on our way back to Tower Falls for lunch we spotted a sow black bear from the Yellowstone bridge with a cub of the year... this was my first of the year... very cute as it romped around near mom and skittered up and down a tree trunk nearby. Others had been seeing sows with new cubs for about a week or more. Following lunch we stopped to look at the peregrine falcon on her nest. She cried out from the ayrie as the male flew through BUT, she didn't get up... she must be incubating or sitting on young chicks! Last year the chicks hatched out around the third, or the last week of May. According to my past year's notes, we should be bracing ourselves for the flood of newborns in the next couple weeks: pronghorns, bighorn sheep, elk, more bison, falcons, owls, sandhill cranes, mountain goats, etc, etc...

5/10/06

Hiked with Yellowstone Association Instructor core again today, this time up the Snow Pass trail. Saw a red-tailed hawk fly into a high Douglas Fir tree with a snake!

5/8/06

Hiking the Beaver Ponds trail with fellow instructors Ashea Mills, McNeil Lyons, Jenny Golding, Brad Bulin, Nathan Varley, Linda Thursten, Julianne Baker, Leslie Stoltz, Shauna Baron, and Amanda Bramblett. Spotted at least 12 species of flowering plants including the first yellow bell of the year for me!

5/6/06

Ok... I had my dates mixed up... here is the real Field Notes entry for May 6th. Jenny and I had a wonderful walk up the foothill of Sepulcher Peak. Skies ran clear and blue making it an essential thing to wear ones sunglasses. Intermixed among the powdery, exposed dirt were at least 14 species of wildflowers. Among them were the first shooting stars of the year and the first purple vetch! Large bands of elk kept us from going into a few places that we intended to but we did explore a wonderful grove of aspens along the main tree line. There were birds galore including: Williamson's sapsuckers, red-naped sapsuckers, hairy woodpeckers, mountain bluebirds, mountain and black-capped chickadees, starlings, and lots of robins. Jenny got my attention and pointed to a pair of chipmunks in the midst of their seasonal duties to the next generation... we assumed, incorrectly, that for chipmunks, this would be a quick act, however, they managed to carry on for several minutes. Minutes later while we were lounging and eating our lunch, we observed the same with the northern flickers... it's contagious :). Once our daily chores were done we joined some friends up at Eagle Creek campground for a Dutch oven cookout of beer bread, buffalo steaks and peach cobbler. While I was waiting for the fire to burn down to coals I made this sketch of Bunsen Peak from our view of the Park and Mammoth Hot Springs.

Sketch of Bunsen Peak inside the Park from Eagle Creek campground

5/5/06

Cool wave of morning air graces our front door thermometer; it reads 29F... reports say that it will reach the 60s, if not the 70's over the next couple days. The surrounding hills and low areas are truly green now. A walk up Eagle Creek this afternoon offered some of the first ray petals coming out on the arrow-leafed balsamroot, biscuit root is blooming, Jasper flushed a couple Hungarian partridge along the creek. Aspen leaves are starting to break out too.

5/4/06

Harlequin ducks at Tower Falls. This male was there today with his lady... just snoozing away in the sun upon their rocks.

Harlequin duck drake

5/2/06

Took a hike around Terrace Mountain in the Park with Phil Knight. Phil will be teaching some of our summer courses this year and we were out to scout one of the potential routes he might take with classes. Along the trail we found sections of intermittent snow, but nothing that was impassable. Found some Milbert's tortoishell butterflies, and the season's first Sheridan Hairstreak butterflies (pic below). Chorus frogs were calling in Swan Lake Flats, and prairie smoke leaves have grown to 4-5" long... no blooms yet. Phil's sharp eyes picked up the first blooming spring beauties and larkspur of the year (probably Delphinium bicolor for latter; pictured below) AND a mountain goat up on Bunsen Peak... and unusual spot for this animal to say the least.

Left to right: Larkspur, spring beauty, Glen Creek flowing out of snow drift, Sheridan's hairstreak butterfly

5/1/06

It's my baby sisters birthday! Sunny warm in the Park. Got up towards Tower falls and saw the peregrine falcon on her nest... she has 4 eggs this year! One black bear was seen  grazing along on succulent greens south of Rainey Lake. Ruby-crowned kinglets were singing along the canyon rim.

4/30/06

The sound of rain patting on the windows and the ground outside... precipitation for the first time in about a week!

Jenny and I hiked around the Beaver Ponds Loop trail this afternoon. Spotted several Milbert's Tortoiseshell butterflies and a mourning cloak butterfly; higher up we witnessed a pair of courting goshawks careen by in the sunny, windy skies over Mammoth. Oregon Grape was starting to bloom along side the buttercups, a bachelor group of mule deer bucks were starting their new set of antlers, though none of them sported much beyond fuzzy buttons. Jenny and I sat and marveled at a pair of Williamson's sapsuckers in one of the aspen groves as they cried out and tested various nest sites in the area. The male periodically rap-tap-tapping (in sparse staccato fashion) to claim this land in the name of his queen. I did a quick sketch from memory of him landing 15' away (below).

Sketch of Williamson's sapsucker male and field notes from Beaver Ponds hike at Mammoth

4/29/06

What a banner day! Jenny, the injured trooper Jasper and I went into the Park for the day... it was more than we expected. We took a small walk down the Blacktail Plateau Road but were turned back by the sign below and left, as it indicated a dangerous bear was in the area. Buttercups and Wyoming Kittenstails (Bessaya wyomingensis) are blooming and we tallied 33 species of birds for the day, got to see the first egg of the sandhill crane pair on Floating Island Lake (it was laid on 4/27 according to Dale and Elva Paulson) AND the 'attack duck'... yes, the attack duck... a drake Barrow's Goldeneye that either attacked the local mallards with a submarine assault, flying kamikaze technique or, according to Dale and Elva, the subtle 'I'm-sleeping-and-paddling-against-the-wind-so-don't-mind-me' approach... then HA! Gotcha MALLARD!!! Spotted 8 species of mammals including pronghorn, 3 coyotes (one of which decided to sun itself on the road just west of us; photo below and right), elk (some of the bulls antlers are starting to branch, others are still only round knobs), bison (SEE THE BIRTH OF A CALF AND THE CHRONOLOGY OF ALL THE EVENTS BELOW), chipmunk spp., Uintah ground squirrels, marmots, 1 black bear near Yellowstone Picnic area and the majestic, bachelor group of bighorn sheep (photo below, center). The latter walked right by our truck and grazed only a few yards away (we backed off with our cameras and video to give them their space).

Left to right: sign that halted our walk down the Blacktail Plateau Road; it reads, "CLOSED Area behind this sign is closed to human travel DANGEROUS BEAR," we turned back... (we'll have to call Bear Management and see what the situation is this week), a bachelor group of bighorn sheep near the Yellowstone River at Tower, and a coyote soaking up some morning sun and warmth on the centerline of the road east of Mammoth.

A BISON CALF BEING BORN...photos by Jenny!

Birth sac hanging out of cow bison (1hour 8min before birth; left), sac has broken and calf's hooves are visible (46 minutes before birth)

Calf's legs are further out and nose is on its way (30 minutes before birth; left), momma with her baby (right); the calf is born within 1hour 8 minutes of watching her, the calf is on its feet (beneath mother) and looking to nurse 19 minutes post parturition.

CHRONOLOGY OF BISON BIRTH TODAY

3:43pm (15:43) Driving west through Lamar Valley Jenny spots a cow bison somewhat off by herself with her tail up in the air at an odd angle and she asks, "do bison have their tail up at a weird angle when they're about to give birth... I think I saw something shiny too."

3:44pm (15:44) We stop at the pullout ~1/2 mile east of the Buffalo Ranch and confirm that she does in fact have a birth sac coming out of her back end. Field notes excerpt: Sac is hanging out, female is kicking with hind legs a little; she's in a sage flat 1 mile east of the Buffalo Ranch, 2 other cows within 100 yards but that's it―rest of herd ~15 adults and yearlings are ~1/3mi to the north. Alternately lying down and standing up (4-5x), calf hooves visible through sac and alternately moving in and out 3-4".

4:18pm (16:18) Hooves in and out alternately―sometimes one, sometimes both, cow is pawing at the ground and something round, the size of a handball, fell from above the vaginal opening... she may have defecated.

4:32pm (16:32) Legs further out (8-10")... maybe the nose?

4:48pm (16:48) Head of calve started to come out as mother stood but then retracted back in as she stayed standing

4:52pm (16:52) SHE GAVE BIRTH!!! She was lying down in the thick sage and all we could see was her lifting her head and maybe something glistening near her back end. All at once she stood up with a shiny ribbon of afterbirth trailing down from her vulva... her head is down, she's licking, licking, licking...

5:02pm (17:02) Calf lifts is 40 or so pounds off the ground and falls back down.

5:03pm (17:03) Again calf tries to stand and falls... licking, licking, and more licking, sage is blocking a clear view of the calf, licking, licking, licking.

5:11pm (17:11) The calf is standing!

5:13pm (17:13) Calf is facing backward up under mother with head up between her legs... it's apparently looking to nurse, appears to alternately sniff and, a couple times, even licked the ribbon of afterbirth hanging down from its mother. Umbilicus hangs down from calf, mother (this is obviously not her first calf as she is pretty long in the horn) stands still and lets the calf investigate/search for the utter.

5:22pm (17:22) Calf still standing and looking for utter/teets, not successful, yet, its head is at least at the right end of mom (the last calf I watched born was confused for a while as to which end of the cow milk was to be found).

5:36pm (17:36) The rest of the small herd of cows and yearlings gather tightly around to greet the new calf and its mother. They sniff and nuzzle the calf as it stands closely along its mother's side... a baby shower for the newborn! We head home following an amazing day in Yellowstone... like no place on earth.

4/28/06

Jasper took a stick to the belly yesterday while we were running/fetching up at Eagle Creek yesterday morning and needed a trip to the vet hospital today. It didn't go too deep (~2cm) but we were concerned about infection. The doctor couldn't find anything in there and prescribed antibiotics, and a regiment of light activity for a week to 10 days.

Stepping outside this morning (before taking our pup to the vet's) we could hear the songs of house finches, song sparrows, Brewer's blackbirds (just in the last week, flocks of these guys have been winging around town), a yellow-headed blackbird, peeps of and osprey over the Yellowstone and the tapping of 2 woodpeckers... one was a red-napped sapsucker, the other was one I couldn't ID. Other signs of the season include the first tourist car parked, with 4-way flashers on, in the middle of the road... with no one around, still further, the 'pocketbook pup' population ie. the dog size/type the easily fits into cubby holes and drivers' laps, has increased with the swelling RV traffic in town... summer's on its way!

4/27/06

Spent the day up in Bozeman... had to take my CDL driver's license test... so I can drive one of the new, fancy yellow Park touring busses.

4/26/06

Sunny and warm skies have risen out of the cool chill of morning. Went for a hike up to Tower Falls this morning and could hear the drumming of ruffed grouse and the hooting of blue grouse. At the falls there was a turkey vulture! These birds are not uncommon at all, but they are in the Park; perhaps a half-dozen sightings are reported each year and most are around the lower elevations such as around Mammoth Hot Springs... this one was all the way up in the Northern Range and only the second one I've seen in Yellowstone!

4/25/06

Went for a long run... all the way to the 3 mile marker on Rt. 89... I nearly died... friends convinced me to run in the Park to Paradise triathlon in May. I've been jogging shorter distances, now I'm having to come to terms with the 5 mile run in the race. In the spirit of keeping in shape, and the memory of my father, I press on.

4/24/06

Foundry day up in Bozeman-approved the most recent castings of wolf 42 in the miniature and medium versions.

4/23/06

Lamar Valley: River is brown and smacking straight into the riprap rock along the road. Trumpeting of sandhill cranes can be heard across from the Lamar's confluence with Soda Butte Creek. Two sandhill cranes winging through little America... looking for a nest site? Spotted my first buffalo calves of the year in a nursery herd near Junction Butte. One lone billy goat was bedded up on the cliffs of Druid Peak quietly chewing its cud in my spotting scope view.

4/22/06

Jasper and I are 'bacheing it' now that Jenny's out of town. We walked, fetched, romped through the water, mud, muck and the mire of Eagle Creek. I checked the nest that the black billed magpies used last year but there is nothing to report other than an empty, unused facility. Grasses are sprouting and spreading to the point where the distinct clumps are now almost touching one another... with a lot of bare ground still visible around them. A skim of ice was on some of beaver ponds, which Jasper easily dashed through on his many fetching exercises, we stayed away from the section where the snipes call notes were coming from though so we didn't run the poor chap out. Robins that were all 'glammed' together during the snows last week are spread back out carrying on with the things robins do in spring... including alarm calling at a guy in a goofy hat and a black, four-legged thing chasing a stuffed rainbow trout fetch toy. Still nothing has touched the poor little mule fawn that died near the creek last month; it like so many other animals, died malnourished and gaunt during this "the worse winterkill year since 1997" according to researchers in the Park. Aspens and willows are starting to bloom―popping out with their telescoping, dangly flower/pussy willow parts... it is after all, the season of love for trees too you know...

4/21/06

Took Jenny to the airport before dawn to go see here new nephew back east. It's a constant dodging of elk and deer along the road at these hours... exhausted, I drove home, had lunch, and took a long nap.

out of the clear blue ether, my 6th grade teacher, Mrs. Buecher, from Brewerton Elementary school in Brewerton, NY sent me this blast from the past... I still recall that duck on the front of her desk...

Drawing I did for my 6th grade teacher in 1987 :)

4/20/06

The sun beat down on Gardiner today. I was a slave to the office until Don Streubel, Yellowstone Association Board of Trustees, fellow instructor and professor emeritus at Idaho State University in Pocotello, ID. Don was in town for a meeting and couldn't bear the thought of being so close to Lamar Valley and all the other trappings of spring and not go enjoy it... I did too. Milbert's tortoiseshell butterflies whirled around the car and stopping off points, the sage flats, and most any place there was bright, warming sun―this included, well, everywhere. We stopped for harlequin ducks on the Yellowstone without success but did find a lone black wolf, moving around amid the heat waves, at the Slough Creek den site. I couldn't be sure if this was a Slough Creek Pack member or one of the mystery pack wolves that's been keeping the females at bay inside the natal dens. Stopped to chat with Elva Paulson who was doing some photography. I introduced Don to Elva as he had stayed at her parents house, the Hammerstrom place, to help out with prairie chicken research when he was in college in Wisconsin. Elva had located a carcass near the Lamar River bridge on the downstream side of the canyon. Nothing really appears to have touched the big bull elk that's been dead in the River on the upper end of the canyon―this was the one that had his antlers frozen in the river ice all winter in such a position that it appeared that he was standing on the river bottom with his rack above the water when it froze. It was nearly perfectly level when we walked out to it in those winter months. Once back at Mammoth Don and I split ways and I stayed in Mammoth to sketch buffalo eyes... yes, just the eyes. People look at you kind of funny in Mammoth when you're toting around a scope and pointing it at buffalo only 25 yards away. One guy even stopped and asked, "what are you looking at," assuming that I couldn't just be looking at bison. I said, "buffalo," he made a "humph" noise and walked off. Some of the buffalo are starting to shed hair; it always seems to start on the points of their ischia, ie. the 'but cheeks', and then moves outwards.

4/19/06

Drove over to the Beartooth Nature Center in Red Lodge Montana. They have a female golden eagle there and a couple mountain lions (in addition to several other rescued animals) I was interested in studying for reference on a few sculpture pieces. Ended up meeting up with friend and fellow sculptor Tim Shinabarger and his wife Roxanne. Tim's working on a 10' elk piece and needed to look a few details himself. The 3 of us had a whale of a time watching this new little black bear they have there. It seemed to have spurts of boundless energy as it attacked a small evergreen in the enclosure, climbed the fence and boxes inside, and bounced rolled snorted and romped as if conducting a performance of agility to us clumsy bipeds. Jasper was so patient all day with me sketching/videoing creatures other than him. I took him out a few times to run and play and played fetch in the Park in Laurel, MT before completing the 400 mile round trip from Gardiner to Red Lodge and back again.

4/17/06

It is the 17th of April and it's snowing! Last night there was a continual pattering of rain on our slanted metal roof. By this morning the wet had started to get chunky. As of this writing at 09:01, snow squalls are gusting across town. ¶ Jasper and I just came back from Eagle Creek. The robins have resorted to their migratory tactics―banding together in treetop mobs that flutter from tree to tree, hunker, chatter and sing as one large team. Others are seen on the road canvassing the ground for edibles―meanwhile the road and all surrounding land is swaddled in wet heavy snow to the depth of an inch or so. The normal vistas are gone, left to the imagination, and are replaced with a diaphanous 'mist-scape'. Only the nearest hills are visible―painted in a loose watery brush. It all reminds me of a Russell Chatham painting, without question. Muted, all exists in varying shades of black and white. Each little feature of the land seems different, from the aspen trunks, to the sage, to the glacial boulders, they're all smoky apparitions of their usual selves. ¶ Black rocks, black dog, white shrubs, white moraines, HOLY CRAP, big, black bison. In walking the road past the beaver ponds, both Jasper and I completely missed this bull bison standing 30' from our persons. He must have snuck up onto us, must have. To be standing there amid that little clone of aspens within striking distance, something must have been awry. Heeling Jasper up we walked without haste as the bull stood his ground, his eyes penetrating the back of my coat. Two of his buddies, black, stood on the hilltop over the road with only their heads showing. This is sort of like walking up onto a stack of chord wood and not knowing it until one of the bolts drops out and dents you head, but it is amazing how often this can happen in the rolling glacial landscape of this drainage. Furthermore, I've managed to do this even in open country dotted in sage. Bison lying still, with the shadows and contours can be as innocuous as a church mouse. And if the truth were to be known, I think they're probably as scared to be discovered as the discover is of them. Jasper and I continue to ramble for some time. For some reason it's harder to leave for the house on this morning; must be the nice weather we're having.

4/16/06

Jenny and I made an afternoon drive out to Lamar to see if we could find our first buffalo calf of the year... ones have been seen since about the 5th of April. We got sidetracked by some bighorn rams at Wrecker pullout near Tower falls and a black bear near the Hellroaring trailhead. This was our first black bear for the year. It was nosing and digging around under the Douglas fir trees to the south of the road only 80yds away... probably a male by its looks.

4/15/06

Jasper, Jenny and I hiked up Eagle Creek together. Jasper flushed a common snipe that swung around and landed upstream about 70 yds. I love these guys! Though in a surprised flush they'll emit a grating "snipe!" call, the winnowing of the snipe during its mating season flights is at once eerie yet intensely soulful. I listened to the beautiful winnowing sounds (actually a sounds resembling a windy whistle created by the forceful passing of air through the birds wings when they perform a steep swoop in the courtship display) as a youngster while solo canoeing the swamps of my home in upstate New York. Skies over the mountains in the Park to the south look ominous, spotty rain, BUT this means more green, green, green!

4/14/06

Out in Lamar. Got to see your seasonal migrant friends Dale & Elva Paulson from Oregon. They'll be staying to watch the spring carpet unroll in the Park as they have for several years past. I spotted 11 pronghorn in Little America. They have just begun migrating from the wintering grounds where I've been sketching and watching them all winter in the Gardiner area. A kestrel and starling are poised outside of the nest holes they hope to occupy in a stand of roadside aspen. Two to 3 bison calves have been seen so far―I've looked but haven't seen one yet. Grounds squirrels are out and chattering their, now ubiquitous alarm of "chee, chee, chee".

First Buttercups Blooming!... the first blooming flower (besides kosha) up at Eagle Creek!

4/13/06

Heading to the foundry in Bozeman... spotted first yellow-headed blackbird in the roadside marsh at the Emigrant intersection along Rt. 89, 30 miles north of Gardiner!

4/12/06

A white butterfly flies over the bookstore in Gardiner. This is the first one this year... this means it's really spring. All the white butterfly species come out of chrysalis each spring instead of over wintering as adults like a mourning cloak or Milbert's tortoise butterfly. It's been long enough and warm enough for them to make the final transition from egg-worm-pupa to adult.

4/11/06

Ran the pup at Eagle Creek this morning. There's lots of northern flicker chatter in the air; their "wicka-wicka" calls could be heard interspersed with their version of the 'high ball' letting everyone know that this is their turf―must be the breeding, or at least pre-breeding period for them. Song sparrows and robins sounding off to the world along that drainage. Some of the first wildflowers are out... those of the alder trees! The purplish-red of their twigs has now been supplemented with the yellow-green of the telescoping catkins that hang in grouped clusters like the locks of a long, curly-haired kid.

4/10/06

No new news on the cougar family as of late... There is 'real' green beginning to show in the hills around Gardiner. Like a verdant gauze draping over the barren, exposed hills, the threads of which continue to thicken with each passing day. We spotted our first osprey of the year on the next platform at Corwin on Friday. Today the bird had company! Spent most of today setting up the maquette of wolf 42 for the enlargement to its life-size version.

4/9/06

What a nice get-away! Jenny and I went to the Cowboy Songs and Ballads at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center this past weekend. We also attended the big music show at the Cody High School auditorium. The big act for the night were the Bar J Wranglers out of Jackson, WY... great harmony and instrumentation. Perhaps nicest of all was being away from our usual routine and having some new/different scenery to enjoy. We stayed at the wonderful guest cabin of Lee & Joy Cronley up on the shores of the south fork of the Shoshone River. In fact, not far downstream from the Cronley's place was the TE Ranch, which was Buffalo Bill Cody's personal ranch during his tenure here.

Above left to right: view north along south fork of the Shoshone River near the confluence of Ishawooa (said "Ish-a-wah") Creek, me at the National Forest Border on the way to cabin, mountain forming the eastern confines of the valley at the Cronley's cabin, our fearless Jasper pup, and the Conley's Cabin along the Shoshone River.

4/7/06

Heading to Cody, WY for the Cowboy songs and poems at the Buffalo Bill Historical Center..

4/6/06

No word on cougar from those who've tried in the last day or so...

4/5/06

Got back from the Chico event and Jenny was kind enough to start dinner. While she did so, I made another attempt at finding the cougars up towards Jardine again... no luck... amazing views of the impending weather though. Vast banks of Payne's gray clouds steamrolled over the mountains. Lightening and thunder ricocheted across the open valley of the Yellowstone for the first time this year. MacNeil Lyons said that he spotted sandhill cranes in Little America in Yellowstone's Northern Range the other day and Troy Davis said that the pronghorn are beginning to get restless for their summering grounds up in the Park. I saw a prairie falcon fly by too... beyond the long-winged flapping of a falcon, its dark armpits gave it away. Mule deer and elk grazing, heads down, wet from rain. All the land now free of snow is awash in a hinting glaze of green―like a shaved head, the Valley is growing its sap green, 'five o'clock' fuzz. Our white truck looks as though it was splashed with tomato soup from the drive up the red clay road to find the cougars. The moisture is refreshing in the most simple of ways.

4/4/06

We didn't find the cougars this morning, though a new carcass was spotted further out into the open flats. Four of us (Paul, Robert, Birgit & myself) watched the previous day's kill site but there was not sign of the kittens. Has momma moved them to a new kill? Yesterday they were there from the very first light. Before heading into give Jasper some breakfast I repositioned and watched from a vantage that gave a view up both Palmer and Bear Creeks... no luck, but that's where Mark Miller and Katy Lynch did spot that new deer carcass that was opened up with magpies on it... I think they're still round, just have to keep looking. ¶ Sculpted on an elk piece for ~8 hours today―building it up from the bones, muscle by muscle.

4/3/06

Went up to watch the cougars this morning from ~06:30-11:00. They were very active in the early hours and we could easily see the kill which had been drawn up under a log. All 3 kittens tugged on it, fed and wrestled. With the improving light I was able to start to distinguish the kittens apart from one another by the coat markings- the younger two had more black spots on their flanks and backs along with a dark strip running the length of the top of the tail and of course the black tip on the tail. The mother doesn't have a black tip on her tail but the older kitten does.

Went back up together with Jenny after work and spotted them again ~18:20, the same time that the mother killed the deer last night. We never did see the mother at all today. Interestingly, we got talking to some folks who'd been there the night before as the light dropped out and the crowd faded away. It turned out that we had met wildlife artist Robert Bateman and his wife Birgit and their friend Paul. This was all 3 of their first sightings of a cougar in the wild and they had plans to stop by one more time tomorrow morning before the left for home. The Yellowstone Institute will be hosting a class by Robert here in October... it should be fun!

4/2/06

Today's one of those days outdoors that you remember for the rest of your life. Jenny, Jasper and I started the day by driving in search of our first bear for the year, leaving the house at 06:05. 'Vibrations' told me to stop at Elk Creek just before Tower Junction. I no more than put the truck in park and Jenny says, "there's a bear!" We hopped out and sure enough, there was a fine dark chocolate grizzly walking through Yancey's Hole... with a gray wolf in tow. This was our FIRST BEAR OF THE YEAR! The bear ambled along, post-holing through the crusty snow (at times he would roll onto his side in order to extract his sunken legs) in the direction of some eagles and ravens. Turns out that the Agate Creek pack wolves had made a kill in that direction just yesterday. This gray wolf (a pup, 524F) was joined by another gray pup and a black yearling, wolf 525F. The three of them never let that bear get anywhere near that carcass. After running off the Ursid riffraff, the came back towards the kill howling all the way to the rest of the pack which was south of the road and Tower Junction. The bear never returned and the wolves lounged on the the hill to the north of the Wagon Road and Tower flats. We watched as a golden eagle swooped in and scared all the ravens off the kill and made a hefty adult bald eagle flinch pretty badly.

While standing chatting with Lori Lyman and Mike O'Connell about the dominance of goldens over balds on carcasses, Lorie mentioned that the cougar had been seen up in Jardine. I had heard the rumor that at lion with kittens were visible but that they had been chased off from the den area by some people with dogs. As it turns out, the lion and her kittens, 3 of them, remained. Soooo, we went out this evening with friends Jonmikel and Rebecca Pardo to have a look―they had never seen a lion in the wild.. Sure enough, after a couple of hours of scanning, at ~18:20, Rebecca says to me, "look at those deer running!". I said, "watch them and look to where they look once they stop." As they did so, the looked back towards the power line and Bear Creek. There in the sagebrush I could see something of a reddish-brown color. With the scope on it, it quickly became apparent that what we were seeing was the female lion with her jaws locked onto the throat of a mule deer doe! HOLY COW!!! It seemed like forever, but she held on for a minute or so, allowing all of us to get a good look and show the other onlookers where she was located. Once the deer was suffocated the lion drug the deer into a irrigation ditch a few feet away, and not feeding or pausing to cover her kill, she darted off down into the drainage... was she going to get the kittens??? We repositioned and were in full view of the deer carcass lying in the ditch. We waited, and waited and waited. Soon some of the other viewers came to our position including Mike O'Connell. At 19:50 Mike said, "there she is! In the trail!". Sure enough, that trail we'd been watching for some time was marked by a crouched female lion, facing us with her stout tail swung to the right away from the muddy path where she sat. Everyone got a good look as the light began to fade, then she slunk off with the stealth of a shadow. Jenny piped up moments later (just as Jonmikel and Rebecca were reeling from the experience of their first lion sighting and putting away their spotting scopes) and said "she's on the kill!!!". We all watched (including Jonmikel and Rebecca who had set their scopes back up by this time) as she then drug the deer from the ditch with deliberate and graceful motions. With the deer's neck in her mouth, she straddled the carcass and drug it out into full view along the flats and down into the drainage. From their our light was nearly lost and our enthusiasm nearly blinded us in those waning moments of visibility. With only Mike, Mark Miller and Jenny & I there at 20:12, Mike spotted the grand finale to the day... silhouettes of lion kittens, two smaller an one larger, romping around against the backdrop of snow, and amid the bounty of fresh dinner served!

Mountain Lion putting the final suffocating bites on the throat of a mule deer doe along Bear Creek outside of Gardiner, MT

Carcass of mule deer (middle) shot through spotting scope

Grizzly being run away from carcass by a black and a gray wolf of the Agate Creek Pack... but first plunking its butt down as to not have it nipped by the wolves.

Bald Eagles in Lamar Valley are back on their nest... notice white head between the base of the two sticks

4/1/06

Jenny and I went to the Boiling River to steep ourselves in the soothing hot waters emptying into the Gardiner River. Walking up the path we were greeted with that all familiar aromatic stench of hot springs! It's funny how such a foul smell can be so welcoming :) Along the River, roads and paths, elk, pronghorn, mule deer among others were obviously reveling in the re-emergence of green stuff. All heads were down giving a nifty brush-cut to what was already very curt growth. The weather could not decide if it wanted to beam bright blue or storm in the most dark and ominous fashion. It snowed, rained and glowed in bright sunshine intermittently all day. Walked Jasper up at Eagle Creek; some dalmation toadflax was already sending up tight leafy growth.

3/30/06

Today's a foundry day up in Bozeman. Before I left for the 'big city' I waded a cross the Gardiner River to take measurements on the carcass of a very old bighorn ewe that was lying on the far shore. Her horns were broken down to small stumps; I guessed her to be another casualty of the harsh winter. ¶Thermometer reads 33F this morning at 06:46. Reports are calling for more rain... I hope so. Had a good spell of rain for a couple hours at midday yesterday. You could almost hear the sucking sound of the plant and soil. ¶Dog is slopping up breakfast and I'm about to. He has kibble, I have granola... not far off from one another I guess. Last night Jenny and I went out in search of our first bear for the year. No luck. We did some sketching of the landscape in Little America as a herd of buffalo milled around us. Some were watching wolves but they were few. We did spot our first Red-tailed hawk in the upper portions of the Park around Elk Creek. It was perched high in a Doug Fir tree and was being bombed by what looked like bluebirds.

CORRECTION ON 3/21/06 ENTRY: WHEN THE FIELD CREW FOR THE WOLF PROJECT WENT OUT TO COLLECT DATA ON THE SHEEP AND COYOTE KILLED BY THE SLOUGH CREEK WOLF PACK IT APPEARED TO BE A LAMB THAT WAS KILLED ALONG WITH THE EWE AND NOT A COYOTE THAT WAS KILLED ... SIZE AND DISTANCE CAN BE DECEIVING SOMETIMES.

3/29/06

Cool air this morning. It's 07:30; it rained last night and the normally dry, dusty road and yards are tamped down by the moisture and substantially darkened. I just took Jasper for his calisthenics down White Lane i.e. chasing his red rubber ball in the church yard amid the land mines of buffalo flops and elk 'marbles'. House finches singing, along with American Robins, a lone goose flying down the Yellowstone River honking all the way... wonder why? Black-billed magpie picking up nest material in a neighbors yard; it was making the "click, click" sounds as it did so. Once Jasper had his fill―tongue hanging out, slobber all down his neck, we walked home to do some sculpting work to the metronome call of the Townsend's solitaire.

3/28/06

A subtle, rich green is seeping up through that landscape. Spring is coming on several fronts and the mule deer and bison that Jasper and I saw at Eagle Creek were and focused on the fresh salad... the first green since last July. The greenery is subtle, diffuse and when one does pinpoint a tufted pad of grass it, or at least most of them show signs of being grazed. Upright blades of grass are nipped back to less than an inch while the sprigs lying horizontally, and uneaten show the full growth of this early season―almost an inch. Jasper was my patient assistant today, to the point of snoring, while I made some more studies of the pronghorn around the Roosevelt Arch; one scribble is shown below. The weather has taken on that chilled morning feel that brings with it that soothing sort of afternoon conditions you might liken to autumn... long sleeve weather... I love it.

Pronghorns being pronghorns at Yellowstone's north entrance.

3/27/06

Spent much of today catching up on office work... so I can get outside later! Did spend a few hours in the afternoon watching/sketching the pronhorns at the north entrance. Several of the females are very obviously pregnant with their milk bags beginning to pucker out.

3/26/06

Spotted our first sandhill crane of the season on the way back from the Crazy Mountains this morning! Red-tails all about, electric blue mountain bluebirds flitted along the roadways and the creeks and rivers, including the Shields, were running deep. Had lunch in Livingston at the Dusty Boot and made for home... followed by unpacking, catching up on correspondence etc...

3/25/06

Crazy Mountains; Porcupine Cabin; day 2 of 3. Today was wonderfully warm, snow was melting and the wind was ablowin'. We snowshoed our way up onto the ridge toward Sugarloaf Mountain. Jasper and his tag-along girlfriend (in the form of a Chesapeake Bay Retriever) made the entire day's trip with us. Her hormones brought her to the point of ignoring food and the comforts of her own home to lay outside the cabin door all night and whine for her truest love... our neutered Lab. ¶ One of the neatest discoveries of the day was seeing an incredible emergence of blue-black snow fleas. They were everywhere in somewhat low, all the way up to to very high concentrations. In one spot I counted around 80 in a 1-foot square patch of white. If this pattern held for the remaining area around us, we were wading through, what could conservatively be estimated at 7.2 million snow fleas on the surface alone―roughly equivalent to the population of Delhi, India within a stone's throw of where we stand. In places there seemed to be unusual concentrations of them. I assumed that these were spots where they had just fallen into a depression of some sort as small as it may have been. In describing some of their natural history to Jonmikel and Jenny, and long about the part where the part about them emerging from the snow to breed, I bent over and dug into the snow below one of these mobs of fleas. Thinking in the back of my mind, "how on earth could these little creatures find their way to the surface through all this dense snow," and the answer was given... we soon realized that this cluster, and all the other clusters of snow fleas for 70-80 yds in all directions were actually the top of a plume of fleas emerging from the underworld right up through the snow! It was incredible to see this streaming, pepper-coated shaft of living grit moving toward the land of love... not too off the mark from our Chesapeake friend :) Jonmikel asked how these little guys could possibly operate in such low temperatures without freezing? I know that many invertebrate species have varying amounts of natural anti-freeze but wasn't quite sure about the fleas―actually a primitive wingless insect called collembola, or springtails. The small appendage on the end of their abdomen gives them the latter name; it wraps around beneath them and is 'flicked' allowing them to jump the equivalent for us of leaping to the top of a 20 story building!. ¶ One possible answer the to freezing-their-tails-off question came on this website, http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacemedicine-05zk.html where it is suggested that an anti-freeze protein keeps them going and might actually have useful properties in the transport of transplanted organs, i.e. allowing them to be shipped at lower temperatures and not damaged in the process.

Snow fleas in ski pole hole

A very quick watercolor sketch as the sun was going down over the Bridger Mountains to the west.

3/24/06

Crazy Mountains; Porcupine Cabin; day 1 of 3. Friends Jonmikel and Rebecca Pardo joined Jenny, Jasper and I for a trip up to the Procupine cabin on the north-western side of the Crazy Mountains for a long weekend. The plan was to sled most of our goods in but the intermittent snow on the roads made the option pointless. We hauled it all in on our backs and liked it. Along the snowshoe in Jasper met up with a robust young tart who obviously in heat and soliciting to our you, and very clueless Lab. Cabin proved to be very cozy, sort of... we closed down all the side rooms and put mattresses on the floor in the multipurpose kitchen with the woodstove.

 The cabin and the dark handsome stranger... and Jenny and Rebecca packed for the trip!

The temptress (left)... the young stud :)

3/21/06

Out in Lamar wolf watching with a Legacy for Learning event for the Yellowstone Association. We spotted the Slough Creek Pack making its way across the slopes north of the Lamar River and Junction Butte. Our timing was quite good in that as soon as we stepped out of the bus the pack stood up and gave a rousing howl before hitting the trail. As they moved they diverted back towards the smallish canyon and the Slough Pack chased a group of bighorn sheep there. The small band of 7 coursed over the rock spires and crags single file making an amazing display of coordination and agility. With the morning sun glowing down upon them, the view was unforgettable. This bunch successfully thwarted the attack but apparently before any of us could realize what was going on, one of the ewes was in fact separated out and killed on the other side of the hill. This stands as the third documented kill of a bighorn sheep by wolves since their reintroduction in 1995. To make the day even more notable, the pack also killed a coyote... then ate it. CORRECTION!! WHEN THE FIELD CREW FOR THE WOLF PROJECT WENT OUT THERE IT APPEARED TO BE A LAMB THAT WAS KILLED ALONG WITH THE EWE ... SIZE AND DISTANCE CAN BE DECEIVING SOMETIMES. The killing part is not that uncommon, the eating is... This stands as the first time that wolves have actually eaten a coyote they've brought down (excepting the one instance where wolf 106F dug some coyote pups out of a den and ate them). It's usually a competition thing between carnivores and therefore they don't usually eat them.. just like when they kill other wolves... they do it purely out of competition, not for food.

3/20/06

Dropped my mom off at the airport today and headed home... 2 bull elk at Lava Creek in the Park have lost their antlers! Also spotted 3 otters gliding along on their bellies in Lamar Canyon and heard the hooting of a great horned owl... could they be nesting there again???

3/19/06

Back home for a relaxed morning with mom consisting of sunshine, oatmeal and the puppy

3/17/06-3/18/06

Went up to  the Charlie M. Russell Art show in Great Falls, MT.  It was a fun trip to do with mom and Jenny. I wasn't showing but went up just to enjoy. The event is a city-encompassing art-fest. In addition to the CM Russell show there were 6 or 7 other shows going on at the same time. We decided to enjoy things and concentrate our effort on the events at the Heritage Inn for the Russell event. Lots of great art and saw the work of friends that were showing and got to meet some folks who are sure to become good acquaintances.

3/16/06

Awoke at 3:30am to the flood-light-glow of the moon coming through the window. Yesterday Mom and I took off into the Park again today. We got past Mammoth today!---despite the buffalo that tried to distract us. We made it all the way into Lamar Valley. The trip along the way showed us amazing changes in the atmosphere from snow to gilded clouds, wispy vapors, to steaming emerald greens of the Yellowstone River. Every several hundred yards mom was yelling "stop, hold on.." jumping out the car with camera in hand.... "this is a postcard picture!" We saw buffalo upon buffalo along the roadway, three bighorn rams at the Yellowstone River near Tower Falls and five more rams along the confluence of the Lamar and Soda Butte Creek, mule deer, prong horns, elk (none of the bulls have dropped their racks that I've seen), eagles, etc.. I was taken by the swelling rafts of Barrow's Goldeneye ducks... many more males now. Geese were heard to be heard flying over in the darkness last night too.

BUT, BUT... the greatest news for the day was getting home after all our excursions and finding a message on the phone from Adam Harris, Curator of Collections for the National Museum of Wildlife Art (NMWA) in Jackson Hole, WY, telling me that my sculpture "Unyielding" had been accepted into the NMWA's permanent collection! The piece had been purchased by a very generous Montana couple and given back to me for the express purpose of placement in a prominent public collection. I am both humbled by their generosity and the motion by the NMWA accessions committee the add the piece to their collection.

3/15/06

Awaking this morning at 5am to the dogs request to go outside, I noticed that the lights of Gardiner were haloed in orange light. Snow was reflecting each lamp's glow. Opening the door for the Jasper pup, a thin dusting of white blanketed the ground where it hadn't before. Not sure what we'll do with mom today... a trip to Bozeman to see the Drawn to Yellowstone at the Museum of the Rockies, or drive out to Lamar to sketch and wildlife watch with lunch in Cooke?

3/14/06

Today was the first day where mom was able to wake up to the views from our front windows―wide expanses of the Yellowstone Valley and Sepulcher and Electric Peaks. I think she was taken with it all. Jenny walked to work and mom and I had hot chocolate (well, I had hot chocolate and she had some raspberry tea with hot chocolate mixed in) and then took the Jasper pup up for a walk at Eagle Creek. Mom kept saying, "you have no idea how lucky you are..." as she took shots of the buffalo in campground, marveled at the rock formations and lichens, the rolling glacial topography, snowy mountain tops, bands of mule deer and distant elk. We walked off trail identifying shrubs and trees. Jasper careened through hill and dale popping up every few moments with either a buffalo trachea or elk leg crosswise in his mouth. I'd give him a hand signal and tell him to "hunt 'em" in order to keep him responsive and checking back should we need him to act according to our needs ie. if we ran into a group of bison over one of these knolls.

We had lunch with Jenny at the K-Bar in town where we saw many friends and acquaintances that were introduced to my mom... who we jokingly call "the mother sculptor". Following lunch mom, Jasper and I had intentions to go out to Lamar but never made it beyond Mammoth. We stayed and sketched, photographed and video taped the elk there for several hours. I say several because we were enjoying ourselves so much , pointing out neat postures taken by the elk and insightful angles, that we forgot what time it was entirely. After collecting Jenny at 5pm and renting a movie on the way home we made dinner for mom of buffalo stakes on the grill, salad and spaghetti squash.

Sketches by mom (left) and I from Mammoth elk.

3/13/06

Picked my mom up at Bozeman airport! Mom is out for a week to visit with us, see our house and to go to the Charlie Russell Art show in Great Falls. I took her for a quick intro tour of the Art Castings foundry in Belgrade and a filling dinner of sushi before heading along the 80 miles to home.

3/11/06

Had a nice jog with Jasper and Jenny down along the Yellowstone River in Yankee Jim Canyon. Bright, sunny, and chilly day... the thermometer showed a low of 1F last night. The River as viewed from the trail up above was a buffy emerald color and when viewed further down acquired some French ultramarine blue tones and contrasted neatly against the 'high-and-dry' ice and snow along the bands and the olive-tinted junipers and Douglas fir.

3/10/06

Today was as day in the field to make up for yesterday's office work marathon. Headed out to Lamar Valley with my eye's peeled for the first grizzly of the year.. haven't seen one myself yet. Apparently, Dan McNulty spotted one the other day (I assume as part of his research down in Pelican Valley). The law enforcement rangers were putting up the grizzly bear closure signs on Blacktail Plateau this morning as I was shooting some film reference of a bull elk at Blacktail Creek. My eyes were also sharpened for any bulls that have lost their antlers. Every bull that I saw today had both antlers still firmly attached. Brad Bulin, another Yellowstone Institute Instructor said that he saw #6 (the bull elk that had his antlers sawn off due to bad behavior in Mammoth this past fall) had lost his trimmed nubbins. Once I got out to Lamar I ran into friend and writer Brian Connolly. While standing there cabitzing we got some glimpses of the Slough Creek wolf pack on a kill north of Junction Butte. I only saw 3 but apparently others had seen more... ravens all around. Word has it that the alpha female (380F) was seen inspecting her last year's den hole... will they use the same, highly visible site again this year??? Time will only tell. Around lunch time... and yes, I was so excited to get outside that I didn't bring a lunch, I found a winter-killed bull elk near the confluence of the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek. As I thoroughly measured the bull's dimentions and recorded my observations, the putrid smell of the bull distanced any thoughts of lunch, or any sort of eating for that matter.

Below is a sketch of a cow elk that I made just before heading home today... I'm working on a sculpture of a bull elk leaping out of some sage. The similarities of the sexes is close enough that the I felt the time was worth the effort.

Cow elk in Mammoth Hot Springs, Yellowstone Park.

3/9/06

A total office day.. besides going for a run with the dog in a blizzard, which came over the mountains to the south like a herd of mad cats, around 8:30 ―I did run my fastest time to date―24:50 from the house to the power line on the Old Yellowstone Trail Rd. A distance of just under 3 miles... must be the new shoes!

3/8/06

A lazy departure from friends Ed Schauster & Melissa Pangraze's house in Driggs, ID. We came back through Bozeman and bought our selves some sushi for dinner and new running shoes! Got home just before dark, at our sushi, grabbed our books and went to bed.

3/7/06

Skiing at Grand Targhee ski slope where our friends Ed and Melissa work. This is a great chance for us to practice our telemark ski turns as touring in the backcountry doesn't offer quite as many opportunities to improve our form. We skied the wussy slopes form most of the day but did go up into the blue slopes for more of a challenge. Jenny refined her bent knee form of 'tele' turning, I spent much of the day sliding 'turtle-style' on my back down the slopes past other unsuspecting skiers.

3/6/06

Made our way up the Snake River plane from Boise, ID to our friends place in Driggs. There is a certain serenity to riding down the highway for an extended period with your sweetheart and your dog :)

3/5/06

Spent a nice day relaxing with friends Tim and Sylvia Copeland at their place in Boise, ID. We haven't seen these two for some time and it was a visit that was overdue.

3/4/06

Well... its come to the BIG 3-0. Coincidentally, my odometer and the truck's odometer both rolled over a milestone. The Nissan Frontier that Jenny and I bought together back in Virginia with 9,000 miles on it just passed the 100,000 mile marker and I just rolled past the 30 year mark! Lots of good stuff has come to be in the last year... and lots more to come for the next.

3/1/06

Foundry run to Bozeman to pick up life-sized wolf 21 to get him ready for the news interview with the Canadian Broadcast Corp. Picked up another batch of ordered bronzes and place the orders for the first Wolf 42s... the companion piece to wolf 21. Alas, we're off for a whirlwind tour from Bozeman to Boise, ID and Driggs, ID... we'll catch you up on all the events when we return!

2/28/06

Today was a true, blue winter thaw. The Gardiner River was up and the color of a latte'. Rills and gullies were awash with foaming white and brown. Park employees were guarding the drainage grates that girded the Roosevelt Arch to keep them from clogging and sending a flood of brown right down the middle of the venerable arch. Rained all day...

Last day of my last winter class for the season. Had great view of the Slough Creek wolf pack from the Slough Creek parking area and Dave's Hill. Ten of the pack members were present and playing, sleeping, nosing around some bison. It was a half an hour to forty five minutes of watching that seemed like well over an hour.

Jasper and I took a brisk walk up at Eagle Creek. Skirting around the bison, we paced ourselves through the slushy wet corn snow and walked on what rocks and bare spots were to be found. Tiny sprigs of green grass could be seen in grazed-over clumps of sedge―like little green eyelashes blinking out at the thought of a new season. Blook in the road, having been frozen for months melts out and streams downhill just as sanguine as the day that elk was drug out of the hills in hunting season. Buds on the Siberian elm in the yard beginning to swell! I have to look in my notes and see when I first noticed this last year.

2/27/06

Today was the first day of my final program for the season. Nine hearty students and myself set out from the Mammoth Hot Springs hotel in the white Yellowstone Association bus this morning. Our first series of stops were along the Blacktail Ponds area. Nate, from Nevada spotted beautiful adult golden eagle from the Wraith Falls trailhead. We jumped to the spotting scopes and managed to get the bird in the scopes while it was still soaring. As we watched, he, she swooped among the forested hillsides to the north. And while Keith was at the scope the bird picked up what looked like a stick in its beak... the mating season is not far off and the courting/flirting activities are just beginning! The amazing gold color of its neck hackles shimmered in the early light. Some distance up the road was the massive bull elk #10. This bull had his antlers sawed off a few years ago for foul behavior in Mammoth during the rut―hence the yellow plastic ear tag bearing the black number 10. Since then he's behaved himself, and like so many other bulls, winters in the Blacktail Plateau area. We watched intently has he grazed along the top of a hill only 60 yds from the road―his massive 7x7 point rack swaying with each movement. Awe came over us as we observed him lift his right hind leg, and with utmost dexterity, scratch his underbelly with the tips of his antlers! Now that's control!

Following a drive down the Old Yellowstone, where we spotted 70+ pronghorn and several bison, and our lunch at the North Entrance Education Center in Gardiner, we went for hike to finish off the day. A group of 11 bighorn sheep were grazing along the foothills of McMinn Bench between Mammoth and Gardiner... "This is what I came for," said Roger from Arizona. He had recently seen Dall sheep in Alaska and this was our first good look at Ovis canadensis―the Rocky Mountain bighorn. When crossing the Gardner River at ~ 1pm the water had a milky green look indicating the warm of the past few days and hours were sinking in. Even the little gully between the hiking trail and McMinn was flowing where it had been bone dry only days before. By 4pm the Gardiner River was a creamy brown color.

2/25/06-2/26/06

Working at home... trying to finish an illustration of a panda bear for the next Ursus bear research journal cover (after the panda is finished I will only have to do the sloth bear to round out all 8 of the world's bear species rendered in pen & ink) and complete a short 500-word article for Montana Magazine about finding a pool full of Dytiscid diving beetle larve in the Park... I'll let you know when they go to press...

This is a photo taken by Jenny is of Jeff Henry shoveling snow from the roof of the Canyon Village General Store in interior Yellowstone. Jeff is also a very accomplished, and widely published photographer (see his work at YellowstonePhotos.com)

2/24/06

Walked the Jasper pup un in the travertine mine above Gardiner and it's snowing, snowing, snowing... It's great. There's been a white-out at times! Elk and mule deer were lounging about and we changed our route a few times to avoid disturbing them. I forgot to mention that on the other day, Mark, the trail groomer at Tower Falls, spotted a bull moose that had just dropped its antlers.

2/23/06

The first marmot of the year! I spotted a yellow-bellied marmot crossing the Jardine Road across from Chapman's place today... despite sub-zero temps this guy must be optimistic for spring.  Windy in the Valley this afternoon. Working on the second-to-last drawing for the Ursus Bear research Journal.

2/22/06

It's been exactly 3 months since dad passed away... Overcast skies and isolated snow flakes making their way to the ground. I'll be doing some follow-up interviews on camera with Jeff Stevens today for a short film being done for the Greater Yellowstone Coalition's summer meeting in West Yellowstone. The event will be geared towards the 10th anniversary of the gray wolf reintroduction in the Park.

2/20/06

Cozied up to the stove at the Buffalo Ranch Managers cabin and did absolutely NOTHING alllll dayyyy! how often does this ever happen???

2/18/06

We spent the night at the Lamar Valley Buffalo Ranch, courtesy of Bonnie Quinn, and awoke to the balmy temperature of -40F at the Lamar Buffalo Ranch! It sounded like there were pipes bursting all over the Gardiner area. Needless to say, we hid inside despite the allure of clear blue skies and shimmering snow. It wasn't even a thought to try starting the truck―we waited until noon, when it was only -25F. And after a failed first attempt I lifted the hood to allow the sun to heat the engine block a bit before trying again... it did the trick. After getting on the road we headed not home, but up to Cooke City to have lunch at Jan & Leo Gaertner's place―Buns "N" Beds... Leo makes a mean lunch-time barbeque... it gets to be habit-forming :) Here's a few shots of the snow banks in Cooke just before we departed town... a little closer to normal snow-fall this year.

Two shots of snow banks in Cooke City, MT on the NE entrance of Yellowstone

2/17/06

It's Friday... cold as hell... and getting colder. Jenny and I attended a gathering in Silver Gate, MT to present Rick McIntyre, aka the wolf watcher in Lamar Valley, with a bronze of Wolf 21M and a plaque given by a group of ~30 wolf watchers. Approximately 100 individuals contributed to buying the piece and the plaque for him.

2/16/06

Finally home and stationary for a brief period. Walked the dog this morning through the metro section of Gardiner. Ravens are flirting with one another on the light posts along main street. They fluff their heads and throats up, clap their bills closed; making a sharp, subdued "click" and hold their wings out in a very chick-like manner... very sexy!¶ I went up to help Jim Peaco identify some insect photos in the Park slide library. I didn't know some of the beetles and wasps and flies that were depicted but was able to correct and properly identify several of the butterfly images.

It's also been brought to my attention that the Animal Planet Show that I helped out with, and was interviewed for, is now airing on HDTV. My brother-in-law saw it on the Discovery Channel on February 12th. It is being aired under the title Planet's Best Ultimate Wildlife Encounters.  The next airing will be at 5pm, February 18th. Check the link for more broadcast times/dates. Our segments is at the very end... so let me know what you think!
 

2/15/06

Spent another fine day at the Art Castings of Montana foundry in Belgrade, MT. I left from Gardiner in the pre-dawn darkness, running the gauntlet of the 'deer infested' Paradise Valley corridor.  Mold maker and sculptor Con Williams of Williams Studio has started molding wolf 21M in the life sized version (see pics below). All the shims are in place for the laying on of the rubber mold material.  I also delivered the medium and miniature versions of wolf 42F to be molded (medium size pictured below). Rob and Kayte Simpson of Pony, MT also stopped by the foundry for a tour. It would be wonderful if more folks could come and see the entire group of artists that work behind the scenes to bring a bronze sculpture into being.. Rob, Kayte and I finished off the tour with a fine meal at the Mint.. they've got great calamari!

Wolf 42F (11") in bronze with walnut base - 5.5" version has a cast bronze base.

Life size Wolf 21 ready for molding - notice the tail, and legs on the right side were removed and shims placed into clay to delineate/separate mold sections.

Artist and expert mold maker Con Williams, of Williams Studio, applying mold rubber to Wolf 21's tail.

2/13/06

Apparently after we left yesterday the intruding wolves got into some real trouble with the Leopold Pack and at least one of the Swan wolves was attacked and badly injured in the fray. Jenny was driving through the area around mid-day and spotted this poor guy escaping across the road with blood on his side and around his face. Bob Weselman aka "Bison Bob," a photographer from Iowa, and a Yellowstone regular, caught the fight with his still camera... will have to check out what Bob got for shots.

2/12/06

Out with the Peake Group from the UK... another eventful day in the wolf world. We had the chance to watch 12 different wolves in the Blacktail Plateau area. Most were of the Leopold pack but the intruders were positively identified (at least the one of 3 gray males with a functioning collar) as 295M from the Swan Lake Pack. In fact, there was an element of mayhem in it all. Wolves were chasing wolves, howling, flirting for a couple hours. Two identifiable Leopold pack females, who weren't discouraging the outside males in the least, were 470F (a black female wolf, now collarless, who has a limp on her right front foot; this was likely due to her being accidentally caught in a coyote trap set by researchers this fall) and a lean gray female, wolf 345F (who appears dominant to 470F). Word came through that an intruding wolf of the Hellroaring Group (wolf 528M) was caught and killed by the Slough Creek Pack yesterday afternoon... fter all, this is the time of year where these territorial skirmishes and romantic escapades-gone-wrong are at their peak.

2/11/06

A pretty amazing day of wolf watching with the Peake Group from the UK. We watched for some time as a couple intruding wolves tried to mix in with the Leopold Pack east of Mammoth. The first male was a large black who made quite a scene at a pretty short distance from the road... howling, bark-howling, and jumping, and pacing around the Blacktail Ponds area, all it seemed, to lure a female away from the main pack which was near a freshly killed elk ~1mile to the east. Another black wolf that tried to mingle with the main part of the pack, which appeared to include the alphas―a black female and gray male, and was run off with his tail tucked between his legs, which, I might add, were in high gear. Also got a look at the Agate Creek pack alpha male 113M―who is likely the oldest wolf in the park at this time at ~9 years old.

2/10/06

This was our first morning in the field with the Kirsty & Alan Peake group from the UK. These were the kind folks that hosted me at their home in Dartmoor Park in Devon, England. They came with 8 other folks for wolf watching in Yellowstone. They just made the snow coach trip up from Old Faithful and are all geared up for some wildlife action. Several, actually most, were swayed into coming on the trip based on the lecture I gave for the Wolf Conservation Trust in Reading, England in October. Right off the bat we spotted 7 of the Leopold wolves―4 black and 3 gray individuals; this included what appeared to be the alpha pair in a copulatory tie―it is the breeding season after all... from there we went down to Gardiner to watch bighorn sheep, pronghorn, bison, elk, etc. and also found, and this was the highlight of the day for me... a northern shrike that landed on a rock right next to the north entrance ranger booth! We later met Jim Halfpenny for some tracking instruction up on Blacktail Plateau. In addition to weasel, coyote, wolf and elk tracks, we found the prints of a deer mouse that made a round trip of well over 840 yds from a hill to the south, down the ski trail to the parking lot, made a loop around the lot, and then all the way back to where it came from... this was an astounding distance for a little creature bounding along in 5-6" leaps. At this pace and distance it would have easily made >5040 jumps to get to that parking lot... think it might have gotten a food reward there in the past?

2/9/06

There's a wall of white that starts where the Gardner River disappears upstream into those limestone/shale cliffs between here and Mammoth. Jasper and I are going to drive into it this morning to go out to Lamar in order to measure a bull elk skeleton that I visited the other day. I had a burst of energy/creativity and started, and nearly completed a sculpture of a leaping bull elk yesterday... now i have to go and get some follow-up measurements to make sure that I have all of his bits and pieces in proportion and in the right places...

2/7/06 + 2/8/06

Errands, errands, and more errands... but we had a wonderful sunrise on Electric Peak on the morning of the 7th... see below...

2/6/06

This is the day that wolf 21M is going to the foundry up in Bozeman in his life-sized rendering... he's loaded in the trailer (compliments of our friend Alexa Calio) and will be on his way at 10:30am! Jim Halfpenny, Larry Marlow and Louie Kyle helped load the sculpture in at 7am. Before we rolled him out into the trailer, Jim Halfpenny stepped back looking at the clay version of wolf 21's track on the hind foot of the sculpture... one that Jim himself had cast in Lamar Valley, and said, paraphrasing here, "seeing that track on there just makes it all seem right." Thanks Jim.

Wolf 21M at Art Castings of MT in Belgrade, MT

2/5/06

What a day... 9 hours were spent butchering a cow bison that Jenny & I and two other couples purchased from a local ranch... no this wasn't one that was straying too far from the Park boundary. This was quite an experience―one that I think anyone choosing a carnivorous diet should participate in... at least once. We began the day by skinning the carcass from 07:20-8:50; this was greatly aided by the use of visegrips and the brute strength of our two friends Don McDougal and Alex Kwiatkowski. We joked after telling them how the buffalo hunters would use mule teams to skin bison carcasses during the great slaughter of those animals... they were dubbed our 'skinning mules' from then on :) Between 09:00 and 16:30 we cut, filleted, cubed, steaked, ground (thanks mom & dad Golding for the meat grinder for x-mas... it works great!) and packaged. With the six of us working on the project we kept things moving right along. I would cut off a ham or shoulder (it took 2 of us to carry each of the hams in), bring it inside from the shed, cut it into manageable, yet still quite sizable, pieces that the others could trim and cut into either stew meat, steaks, trimmings bound for ground meat, roasts, dog food or bird (raven and magpie) food. I was amazed to see the amazing back straps of the bison―this is what early hunter, travelers, and natives alike referred to as the "succulent hump" meat; it was ~7" wide, 4" thick and over 4 feet long!. Know to most as the fillet mignon, or meat of the "T" bone steak, this should prove to be amazing eating. We guessed her to weight in the neighbor hood of 600-700 lbs dressed out, and upon weighing the entire freezer-bound lot, Rebecca Pardo tallied up 204 lbs of bison meat. All totaled and calculated this amounts to (excluding our time) getting the meat for $3.43/lb. Not a bad investment in healthy eating not to mention the enjoyable time spent together with friends.

The bison butchering crew (lft to rt: Jenny, Alex, Rebecca, Don & Gilaine)

2/4/06

A native American blessing of the wolf 21 sculpture was conducted today in the presence of myself, Jenny, Rebecca Pardo, Don McDougal and officiated by Sabrina Hanan. We rolled 21 into the open air outside the studio space―the first time I had really gotten him out in the natural light to look at him, and performed the ceremony there with the anticipation of sunset. This is something that I had never really considered, but when Sabrina mentioned it some months ago, it seemed like a very fitting idea... invoking the spirit of this animal in the clay likeness of him...   I add a little more on this, as well as some pictures when i get another second. GB

Sabrina Hanan performing blessing of Wolf 21 Sculpture

2/2/06

Today's early hours were spent driving into Lamar Valley in the Park... always a refreshing experience... to meet with the Greater Yellowstone Coalition's office staff. They were having a planning retreat at the Buffalo Ranch there and wanted me to go out with them wildlife watching this morning for a bit before their meetings resumed. Some were interested in wolves but they were slim to nil on sightings this morning. The Agate Creek pack was visible only for a few moments, and the bison, elk, eagles, and coyotes went about their days as hopeful "wolfies" zoomed by―tyring in vain for a glimpse of Canis lupis. Though we too tried, the absolute highlight of the morning was a pygmy owl! Michael Scott though he heard it and drew my attention that way. Although it was difficult to hear over the buzz of 'people talk', the very slow, whistling toots of a 'pygmy-owl-talk' could be discerned. In a moment Michael had spotted the 'little tooter' and had his scope on it! The first glimpse that I had of it was the dark black eye-spots on the back of its head... what deception!

...notice the false eyes on the back of the pygmy owl's head

Having left the GYC crew to their meetings, I struck out on my own to explore some leads friends Shauna Baron and Brad Bulin had provided about some potential reference material―specifically a bull elk and a bison carcass. I managed to find the remains of the enormous 6x6 bull elk (below) a short distance east of the Buffalo Ranch. All time stood still as I marveled over this majestic animal's bones. When all my measurements and sketches were done, an hour had zipped by. My video camera was still charging at the Buffalo Ranch so I retrieved it and made for the confluence of the Lamar River and Soda Butte Creek. It was there, and totally unexpectedly, that I was able to watch 5 big, bighorn rams and a golden eagle. As I started rolling footage for my reference collection, they started butting heads! The dull crack-and-thud rang through the winter landscape. Time and time again they would feed, meander, then turn, almost instantly, raise off the ground under the power of their hind legs, and collide. Several of these episodes ended up on tape as I looked on through the black and white viewfinder of the camera. What at morning! Driving home with glee, and with my eyes squinting in the blinding sun and reflective snow... forgot my sunglasses... it seemed like a morning well spent.

1/31/06

Our last morning on the Winter Wildlife Discovery class. We had the greatest time watching a bull bison right next to the road sweep his way to breakfast through ~15" of snow. It was interesting as he would sweep, then sniff, walk on, sweep once, sniff?, sweep again and sweep twice, thrice, and feed. This pattern repeated itself in a way that made us think that he was clued into those signals (most likely the scent) of decent grazing below. We got tricked by four coyotes a little later... Ellie and Ralph, friends from Germany thought they had spotted the Druid Peak Pack which is down to 4 individuals from its historic height of 37. Backlit (and at a distance of ~1.5 miles I might add) they were posing as wolves, and as they stood and walked  their 'airplane ears' betrayed their true identities. Like I always like to say... if you haven't misidentified an animal or spotted on of those moving "stump bears" or "rock wolves" aka Canis mineralis, then you haven't spent enough time in the field.

1/30/06

Today I spent the majority of the day teaching the Winter Wildlife Discovery program for the Yellowstone Association Institute. Our group of six folks from the San Francisco, CA, Helena, MT, and Durango, CO, areas were a blast. We counted 123 pronghorn along the Old Yellowstone Trail Rd. (which is probably ~1/2 of the Park's entire population―many of them winter in the Gardiner-Cinnabar stretch) and spotted at least 40 bighorns between the Cinnabar herd and the band up on McMinn Bench inside the Park. Several of these sheep were lambs and some really nice rams were to be seen as well. Bison are still around the north entrance and apparently the Park hazed some bulls back further into the Mammoth area from Stephen's Creek. I took the group over by the capture facility to address the whole bison brucellosis issue. The capture facility is empty now and closed for the time being... wonder when things will heat up again?

1/29/06

Jenny and I bought a bison with 2 other couples at the Montana Buffalo Ranch in Cinnabar, MT. It was $650 for this heifer and she should fill our freezer for the next year. In so doing, we shouldn't have to ration our venison so strictly. As small as she looked among her herd mates, she was nearly bigger than life once we got her home and hung in our friends shed.  I was very glad we bought the chain lift to raise here up to age as I think it would have been a chore any other way. Jonmikel helped me take make the reference measurements on her so that I could have my own dimensions on an adult cow bison for later study/modeling.

1/27/06

Today is a day my dad, and mom, would have been proud of. We just held the reception for the send-off of Wolf 21 in the life size version at Jim Halfpenny's Track Museum here in Gardiner. It was such a wonderful outpouring of support for what this sculpture means to so many people. Just off the top of our heads we could think of at least 85 people that came (including folks from the Park, Wolf Project, the town of Gardiner, the Forest Service, Buffalo Field Campaign, the Gardiner Chamber, local businesses, ... and yes even the sheriff as the parking was overflowing into the streets) and there were several more, I'm sure, that we have yet to recollect. On display were also the miniature, and 11" versions of Wolf 21, the bison sculpture, and the clays of Wolf 42 in the two smaller sizes, oh and, of course, Jenny's famous chocolate chip cookies. People filed in and out continually over the 2 hours we held the event―the place was packed and difficult to move around in. People were very curious about the bronze casting process, the 113 hours of sculpting that it took, and some 330 lbs of clay and armature, how its getting to the foundry, etc, etc. Also on display were 4 poster-sized study sketches of the two wolves that I presented to Bob Landis, Mark Miller, Dan & Cindy Hartman and Dale & Elva Paulson as a thank you for their contributions of film and photo reference material to the project. I also presented Jim Halfpenny with a miniature bronze of wolf 21 as a thank you for allowing me the time and space to complete the life sized rendering. This was after we shaved the foot pads off the hind foot, pressed the clay into one of Jim's castings of 21's actual tracks and reattached it to his foot. I thought this would be a fitting finale after using his actual measurements and measurements of his skull. Thanks so very much to everyone who helped make this event possible and making it so special!

As sit to write these words, my mind reaches for the phone, and maybe my arm does too. It has only been since December 22^nd that Dad has passed. At any other milestone, as so many before, his voice was only a few pressed buttons away. I would tell him of the gathering that assembled this night. There were perhaps 100 people who amassed from this town of some 800 residents―to see something that come so uneventfully from my hands―a few hundred pounds of clay and wood fashioned in the shape of a life-sized wolf. They came in numbers that I couldn't have imagined. I remember the joy you held in your eyes as I gave you the casting of that buffalo in your hospital room―my first sculpture―entitled "Unyielding". The appropriateness of that title even more apparent now as I look back on the last 3 years with cancer. That same awe was in the eyes of those from all around us, friends and acquaintances from all over this town. You would have been beaming, quiet as you always were, smiling that huge smile. I miss you... hope you're proud Dad.

1/25/06

I was out in the field with a press trip for day 2/2 in the northern part of the Park. Tom Wharton, writing for the Salt Lake City Tribune was out with us. Tom had never seen a wolf and was really hopeful. The payoff of following up on some 'vibes' proved worthwhile as we got a look at 6 of the Slough Creek pack. We even got to see them make a half-hearted attempt at a bull elk in the slopes to the north of Junction Butte. We started off the morning with a huge bull elk around Lava Creek with amazing frosted antlers and muzzle... even eyelashes! The morning was a fine capstone to the two days together as we stopped at Frog Rock on Blacktail Plateau and listened to the singular howls of a lone wolf and the chorus of coyote harangues from far in the distance.

1/24/06

Walked Jasper up at Eagle Creek this morning. Snow is cold and dry, rounding off into granules that kicks about like so much fluffy sand. Raven tracks around some of the rumen contents from elk and bison taken in the recent hunts. Jasper finds these 'treasures' with ease. Just before leaving we ran into Mike Meiss of the Buffalo Field (BFC) Campaign when he pulled up to use the restroom at Eagle Creek Campground. In talking with Mike, he said that the total bison that have now been taken in to the capture facility at Stephens Creek is 651 and that, by the end of this morning, >400 bison will have been shipped to slaughter―some being taken in the double-decker cattle trucks as far away as a rendering plant near Boise, ID. The BFC, based out of West Yellowstone/Hebgen Lake area has been closely monitoring the goings on at the Park capture facility since the situation began―they have also been observing how the first Montana buffalo hunt in 15 years is going. Mike says a lot of their time has been spent dispelling the notion that BFC is an anti-hunting group, rather they are merely there to document the hunt progress; they have even given some of the hunters video tapes of their hunts to take home as souvenirs. During the first portion of the buffalo hunt in Montana 21 bison were harvested including 15 at Gardiner, and the second segment of the hunt has yielded 13 harvests―all of which have been in Gardiner. The quarantine facility outside of Gardiner is now filled with its quota of yearling bison, the rest are being taken to slaughter.

1/23/06

A nice walk with Jasper this morning, Bohemian waxwings trilling about the skies over Gardiner, mule deer on the slopes in town and bison, and more bison, making their way down the trails to Gardiner. Temperature was 21F when we got out and about today. Friends in the Park were saying that one of the radio-collared bison that they were tracking made its way up from the interior of the Park into the northern range, and then ultimately into the capture facility of Stephens Creek outside of Gardiner. The bison 'round-up' and slaughter has been quite a hot topic of debate here in town, in the Park, and across the state. "To date, approximately 510-540 animals have been captured, 112 have been sent directly to slaughter and 38 sero-negative calves have been shipped to the brucellosis quarantine research facility. As many as 100 animals are expected to be shipped from the facility on Tuesday, January 17. Loading and shipping of bison is expected to continue through the week."

1/22/06

Worked hard on getting wolf 21 in the life-size in shape for the send-off reception on Friday. Wolf 42 sculptures are close behind. The bull elk that had his antlers sawed off this fall was bedded behind the Cecil's building in Gardiner this afternoon... good ole' #6. Jasper was bounding along on the way to the YA center and nearly bumped into him... and he never budged out of his bed. Needless to say, we left 'stumpy' to chew his cud and we walked the long way around.

1/19/06

Today's Winter Wolf Discovery class (Day 2/2) started out with a rousing howl from the Agate Wolf pack from Hellroaring overlook. In the darkness of the pre-dawn, low howls reverberated from the area around Garnet Hill in Yellowstone's northern range. All 9 of us stood silent, no one else around but the silence and this morning chorus. Low bass notes were soon joined by yapping wails of higher pitched voices. Though people soon piled in, no one ever got a look at the wolves as long as we were there. Some of the Wolf Project folks showed up and got signals from the Hellroaring group of wolves more to the north, but they too remained elusive. Upon heading east we did find the Slough Creek wolf pack back up in the same area that they had the kill yesterday. They looked like rocks again―all lounging about and flattened into the snow only to become a wolf, at the long distance of a mile or more, with the lift of a head or tail. There were 8 or 9 black wolves and 4 of the 6 grays present. Further east we stopped by the Confluence area to find a couple bighorn rams, one of which had really broomed off his left horn tip... almost to the point that it had splintered and truly did look like a small whisk broom. One the way back into Mammoth for lunch we spotted the red and white wolf capture helicopter and the yellow spotter plane. Apparently they had gone in after the Agate's and managed to dart 3 of them including wolf 113M―who may now be one of the oldest wolves in the Park at just shy of 9 years.

1/18/06

Day 1/2 of Winter Wolf Discovery Class: Slough Creek wolf pack was visible from just east of Junction Butte for most of today. They had a kill there and most of their time was spent lounging about the snowy knoll above the kill site. Interludes of fitful play and dominance behavior were seen as they moved bedding sites and pounced through the snow. We never could see the kill but only knew of its location as they waltzed down there to feed more and as the birds entered and exited the arena. Present were the alphas 490M, 380F, beta male 377M, Sharp-right (the gray wolf with the kink in its tail sending it off on a somewhat sharp, right angle), all 3 pups of the year―cloaked in black fur, and 3 others for a total of 8 black wolves and 2 grays.

1/16/06

Jenny and I slept in today! Long after the sun rose and shone through our window and off the snow-driven peak of Electric Peak we lazed about with the dog and cat in our bed. When I finally made the effort to pick my head up off of the pillow, I did so just at the exact moment that a juvenile sharp-shinned hawk landed on the fence top right outside the window! The small size and brown spotting on its chest gave away species and age. Jenny immediately snapped to attention, as did the cat and dog. We watched as the ball of feathers tucked one foot up into it's down and almost as fast as it landed, another―a juvenile also, sprang up behind the other―airborne. The first immediately vaulted skyward and did a aerial cartwheel as the second veered to avoid it. Both were backlit and the morning sun show through their strongly barred tails.

We walked Jasper up at Eagle Creek around midday. It certainly deserves its name during this, the Gardiner late elk hunt―gut piles are on everyone's menus. Eagles, both balds and goldens, young and old, amid swells of ravens drifted about on the moving air and clear blue skies. Jasper was overcome by the whole scene an even had to join in on the scavenging by sidling up to his own, and might I add―ENORMOUS, bison gut pile from the early session of the buffalo hunt there. Needless to say we quickly put an end to that sort of thing.

1/15/06

Took a jog with Jasper this morning. White was in the sky to the south. Half an hour after we finished our fetch game―Jasper's part of the exercise, and went inside the sky turned white. Starting off with some pellet-like snow tinkling against the window, it quickly morphed into huge puffy flakes driven by a south-westerly wind. It's let up a little and I can just barely see the Cecil's Fine Foods building. Jenny comes home from Portland today and I'll get to hear all the great stories of the music festival up there. In the mean time, I'll be printing out some reference material for wolf 21's life-size version and working on getting wolf 42F up to specs.

1/14/06

Spent most of the day working on the wolf sculptures, esp. wolf 42F; the former alpha female of the Druid Peak Pack. I've tore it apart 3 times already and think I've finally got it close to right. Friends Dave Bell and Sarah Richey came over for venison fajitas last night and afterwards I took them down to see the life-size wolf piece at Jim Halfpenny's. I worked on it until a little after midnight and walked home. The most amazing affect of the nearly full moon was visible to the north. A wispy bank of clouds rose up from behind the skyline, and against the midnight blue of the vacuum of space, they seem to have a silver blue glow about them. Even more dazzling were two fields of snow up on the mountain near the sky line that reflected a more intense version of this lunar light so that they looked as if to be smoldering in what can only be described as a low blue fire. Below is a sketch of the Yellowstone Valley looking upstream from the Joe Brown Trail at the head of Yankee Jim Canyon―Cinnabar Mountain is the upshot land to the right (south) and Mt. Everts, near Mammoth, is the landform in the notch in the background.

1/12/06

Foundry day... spent the midday hours proofing some more waxes of current pieces and refining some of the wolf patinas with Alan and Eric at Art Castings of Montana. I can't say enough about these guys, and gals. ACM is such a treat to work with. It's clear they make every effort to do things as well as they possibly can. This is a rare and very appreciated trait in the foundry business.

After dropping puppy boy off to our friends Steve Gehman & Betsey Robinson's I drove out to Pony, MT to meet with friends that I had met out in Lamar Valley a year or so ago. We've been threatening to visit with them ever since and finally had the opportunity.  The two of them have a wonderful home and a great love of art as well. Perhaps most exciting for me was that fact that Rob, unknown to me, has a fascination with bones! We spend considerable time looking over his collection of real and reproduction skulls (the latter of mostly extinct fauna). He would whip something off of one of the shelves and ask me to identify it, we'd share some insightful facts and out would come another skull, or pelvis, or humerus... back and forth we went until it was time for the Madison Valley Ranchlands Group meeting in Harrison was to begin.

The Ranchlands group is a non-profit organization of ranchers, conservationists, and generally, anyone interested in stewardship of the land in the Madison Valley. This group is really doing some innovative things to deal with the changing times. Through their work on weed control, water quality and watershed protection, guiding land development, and working with wildlife issues, they are really helping other watersheds, and regions understand the possibilities available to them when dealing with the human-related issues that are affecting this region as a whole. Jon Crumley (president) and Lane Adamson (Project Director) of the Ranchland's group have been kind enough to come over to Gardiner to speak with some of my wolf courses through the Institute and this was a nice opportunity to visit with them on their home ground.

1/11/06

This is a morning office notes section... AND Jenny's birthday! She's heading out to Portland, OR to go to an old-time music festival today with other friends.  I'm home with the pup, catching up on work here at the house, doing some sketching of wolf 42F for the sculpture of her... she's really challenging to capture. Her character and distinctive features are much more subtle than those of her mate, wolf 21M. Thick, impending overcast skies are visible up at Mammoth and creeping down into the Valley. It's raining, high winds blowing up in Livingston (to the point where they closed part of the highway) and snow's falling in Bozeman.

1/10/06

Had a wonderful day out with the Montana Wilderness Association out at Lamar. Actually, before meeting with them in the morning, my drive out in the pre-dawn darkness produced a sighting of a red fox that traipsed across the road just a bit east of the chapel in Mammoth. When we did meet up and gather our gear, we made our way over to Slough Creek to listen for any wolf howling. In turn, we were greeted by the most wonderful coyote chorus and among the howling trio closest to us was scarface... a venerable old male of the pack who's been around for a number of years now and one I always look for in that area. On many occasions he has been up on Dave's Hill howling his head off 30-40yds away as we watch through scopes at the hot breath and steam arising from his calls. So close he has been at times in the past that we could see readily see the scars on his muzzle and eyelid and even into his mouth where the chips and rounded features of his teeth attest to his age. The last time I saw him up on Dave's Hill at Slough in winter like this he had an injured paw that he limped along on―leaving spots of blood in the tracks behind him. At midday we skied up to Tower falls on the nicely groomed surface and peered down into that hissing spring, with its log jam and sulfur deposits on the bend of the Yellowstone, as we had lunch.

1/9/06

It's Monday morning, 07:26, and I'm headed into the Park to do some sketching... let you know how it turns out.

19:30 Got out to Lamar and heard reports that the Driud wolf pack was in Round Prairie. I took a ride down that way and as I passed the Lamar River the careening, rocketing form of a golden eagle was on the tail of smaller bird, a duck? The smaller bird prevailed and the big golden turned and sought it's perch again.  Rick McIntyre said that he had signals from their radio collars of the two druid males but not have any sightings. I went back over to the confluence of Lamar and Soda Butte Creek to sketch the bighorn sheep there. A band of ~20 individuals and many of them were selecting the seed heads of local grasses there including even those of the basin wild rye grass.

1/8/06

This morning's weather started out very benign, but with a large cloud bank building to the south. Soon the visibility that extended all the way to Sepulcher Peak was obscured and shortly blocked altogether. Snow came in huge gobby flakes, and did so for a couple hours. Sculptor friend Tim Shinabarger said that it was raining at this same time in Billings. Jasper and I were glad it wasn't rain here as this also happened to be the time that we went for a run... my first jog for exercise in several years―I hate running but the pup has gotten to age where real exercise is needed each day, and frankly, so have I. My legs are going to be sore. ¶ I worked on the 11" version of wolf 42F today for some time while the snow kept falling. I worked on the couch because is small enough to lay on my lap and the view out the window is irresistible. At night, after a great dinner from Jenny's crockpot artistry I worked on the life-size version of wolf 21M. A milestone was turned as the enlargement frame was removed and he was put up on the rolling table that I made just for him. Two inches of white stuff fell by afternoon.

1/7/06

 Cascading trills of hundreds of Bohemian waxwings fill the air over town. Their elegant bodies wing about as one enormous entity until they sift out into a neighbor's tree to test the feeders. Jenny, Jasper and I skied up at Jardine this morning and didn't see another soul until we were almost finished. Weekends inspire sleeping in :)

1/6/06

This morning dawned in pinkish light gracing the bottoms of the overcast ether. The light mixed with the cobalt and ultramarine clouds to make a lively transition of purple between the two. Very windy, 22F this morning. Stood behind the sign in the churchyard as I played fetch with Jasper to keep my ears from falling off.

1/5/06

Spent most of the day working on getting wolf the 42F sculptures up to snuff. After tearing them apart, despite the near complete state, I have a lot more confidence in their truer representation of her. Ran errands, and picked Jenny up at work, there's enough light to play for a bit after her work day is done now. Mule deer on the slopes of Eagle Creek, bison on the flats and Jasper getting into a carcass near the road.

1/2/06

Happy New Year everyone! We've made it back home... just this past Friday in fact. Our stay in NY was longer than expected as my father, George C. Bumann, 52,  passed away on December 22nd after a 3-year fight with prostate cancer. I will have much more to say about what my father and all that he and this experience has meant to us but, the winter teaching schedule is in full swing and I'm presently running out (at 05:28) to teach another course for the Yellowstone Association Institute in Lamar Valley. Hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years and I catch up with you and a day or two.

Field Notes Archives:

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All material contained herein is copyrighted against unauthorized use and reproduction in any form
by George B. Bumann

© G.B. Bumann 2006