Tag Archives: wolves

Resolvability

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LamarWolf4908

We are nearly through with our semi-annual inspection of Yellowstone National Park having checked off almost all of our items on the list except for the few involving working with wolves.

Wolves. What can I say about wolves except that they’re the prima donnas of Yellowstone. They’re good looking, they’re cool, they’re head turners wherever they go and they know  it. They’re the rock stars of the park and pretty much do what ever they want to. But that also makes them super-hemerriodial to work with.

They know that they play a large part in this inspection report and usually are falling all over themselves trying to stick their muzzles in everything. They’re the original photo bombers, nonchalantly walking into picture after picture, stealing the thunder of who ever else is being photographed, but not this year.

Apparently they are cheesed off because I outed their watcher they had set up to observe us and blabber it all over the park that we were coming to do our inspection again, see http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/, and had made themselves unavailable the entire trip, showing themselves to the occasional tourist but never to us. It looked like it was going to be the first time in many years that we were not going to be able to include the wolves in our report.

Through the use of an intermediary we were able to convince the Lamar pack to assist us, grudgingly of course, with the last item on our report listed as “Resolvability: Can You See the S.O.B.’s Or Not : YES or No”. Resolvability as you know, is defined as “the quality or state of being resolvable”, like that helps right, by one of the better known dictionaries who asked to remain anonymous after hearing that they would be quoted in our report, but whose initials we can disclose are Merriam Webster. To clarify matters a little more clearly, we  turned to our own patented, copyrighted, unprinted dictionary “Words You Don’t Hear Much and Understand Less” (The Institute press : ISBN: 55555555551: Author: The Director : © 2015 about 15 mins ago).

Our definition of Resolvability is “to clarify; to make clearer; to see way, way out there; to get fuzzy looking stuff to look right; : Photographic context: to get pixels that are blurry and all over wonky to line up right and get really clear so you can make out what it is you’re trying to see; to not be fuzzy; to not be unrecognizable because it’s all fuzzed up and you can’t tell what it is; to get little hard-to-see details not so hard to see; and so on”. We’ll use our own definition for this report as it makes more sense than the ones those professional dictionary types provide.

So to test the resolvability of seeing wolves we asked them to come in closer so we could at least see them with our naked eyes, but being wolves and the Lamar pack at that, the biggest divas of the bunch, the most we could do was get them to come in to about 3/4 of a mile from our viewing station. They did deign to howl for us however. Being so far out there meant that they were just tiny itsy little black dots barely resolvable with the naked eye and only if you knew exactly where to look for them. The dots didn’t even look wolf-like. You couldn’t see ears or eyes or as they say in Wisconsin, nothin’. You couldn’t see nothin’. So the wolves get a big fat FAIL on this test. We’ll see how they like it when management reads this report and sees how they acted. I hope they get transferred down to Old Faithful where they’ll be on display all day long with screaming kids and flash cameras going off in their face all day . We’ll see how they like being divas then.

We did have one ace up our sleeve though. We had this great big long lens that has plenty of resolvability built into it and we were able to get some pictures of them. Not really clear ones with every pixel lined up perfectly but resolvable for being shot at 3/4 of a mile away in the rain and nearly dark out. This is a huge crop from the area where the wolf was sitting. If the scene were viewed with your eye the wolf wouldn’t have been visible, just a dark unwolf-like dot. So I guess if we got any pictures at all where you can tell they’re wolves than there was a certain amount of resolvability and we may have to revise our report to a Yes.

Note : To those of you tuning in late the following posts will catch you up on preceding events. There is no extra charge for this service, it is included in the cost of admission. We know you don’t want to miss a minute of our fascinating but undocumented report.

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/the-words-out/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/announcement-13/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/yellowstone-passes-inspection/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/ghosts-in-the-darkness/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/you-dont-see-that-every-day/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/now-are-the-foxes/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/into-each-park-some-rain-must-fall/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/through-the-keyhole/

http://www.bigshotsnow.com/reflectivity/

The Word’s Out

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When we, and the we would be me, The Director of the World Famous Institute and any of the many staffers and interns we choose to bring along, attempt to slip into Yellowstone National Park for our annual inspection tour, we try to do it on the sly. We don’t want the usual Pomp And Circumstance, the parades, the cheering crowds, we want to be able to travel anonymously through out the park without everyone coming up for autographs and offers of sexual favors and incredible investment possibilities. We’re here to work.

But somehow and to this date I have never figured out how, the word gets out. No matter how carefully we tell people that we’re going back to the park and it’s like a secret, don’t tell anybody kind of thing, the animals, the park personnel, the wait staff at all the park restaurants, they all seem to know about it before we do. As a wildlife photographer I can only assume we have a mole in our organization.

Our advance scouts that we send in to get things scoped out for us have been sending back pictures and as you can see all the major players are aware of our impending arrival. It ‘s like when a restaurant gets advance notice that the health inspector is coming, you won’t find a cleaner kitchen. You could do surgery in that kitchen. Well it’s the same in the park. The wolves clean up their act, only killing the healthy good looking elk and not showing you the carcasses of all the little rabbits, voles, dead stuff off the highway and other disgusting things they eat. This hampers our ability to get the nitty-gritty on what’s really going on.

 The wolves are the smartest ones of the bunch and they post watchers around the most likely spots we’ll hit, like this one at the Cascade Creek area near Canyon. We’ve seen this guy before and he is a world-class blabbermouth. If he’s seen our scouts and you can be sure he has, he’s looking right at one, we might as well abandon any hope of getting an accurate picture of park activities. This will not keep us from making our annual inspection however. We’ll be there but this time we have a surprise in store for them. This time we’re going in disguised.

That’s right. We have created costumes for some of our intern volunteers to wear, such as a badger, a cottontail, an elk calf with a damaged leg, things that the wolves wouldn’t touch if they knew we were coming in to inspect. This will hopefully allow us to get close enough to the wolves and other predators so we can photograph them and the conditions they’re living in. Now, we’re sharing this information with you, our loyal readers, so you’re aware of how we get some of the incredible exposes, not to mention world class photos that we’re famous for, but you’ve got to keep this quiet, otherwise it is not going to work and if you’ve blabbed there’s a good chance we could lose some or even all of our interns.

OK then. That’s it. We’ll be off real soon for the Spring inspection at Yellowstone National Park and we’ll do our best to bring you first hand accounts of everything that transpires. So stay tuned and watch this space for further developments.

P.S. we are always looking for bright young volunteers to fill our intern ranks. Send name and working phone number to the Director, % The institute and please be able to write your name as we need it for the Release of Liability form our lawyers require of all new workers.

Pancho and Lefty

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WolvesNightOut5661

It is slowly turning to Spring up in Yellowstone, things are greening up, Pancho and Lefty are on  the prowl and that means Saturday night dances at the Long Tooth Saloon in Blacktail Flats. These two have just had a tough day of eating dead buffalo, laying around in the grass, drinking out of the pond, hanging out, talking crap, eating dead buffalo and deciding on how early they want to get to the dance tonight. They need to look sharp because everybody and I mean everybody is going to be there and if there is ever a chance of hooking up with some fox, I mean wolf, tonight’s the night.

Pancho is asking Lefty if he’s sure he wants to wear that collar as he might look like a total dweeb. He doesn’t want to get stiffed because his wingman looks like a dork. Lefty says It’s cool, back off and they’re on their way. It’s Saturday night in Yellowstone and things are going to get wild.

Into The Darkness

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Darkness7479

Sometimes wolves go off on their own. Perhaps they just get tired of being in the pack and want some solitude. Earlier this morning the pack had been feeding on an elk cow they brought down on the Cascade Creek drainage here in Yellowstone a few days ago, and there was the usual melee of pushing and shoving, snarling and snapping as all the of the pack members fought to get their share. The kill was fresh and everyone ate their fill. Even the youngest were stuffed. It wasn’t long until the carcass was reduced to a pile of bones and wolf bellies were bulging.

The wolves began to drift apart, singly and in pairs. The younger wolves chased each other and played, burning off the energy that is a constant state for them. The older ones moved off to find a spot to curl up and sleep. This wolf, not ready to sleep and not in the mood to play with the younger wolves, began to prowl around the area checking  for intruders. A grizzly had been in on the kill the night before and the pack was nervous as they fed. Grizzlies don’t pose much of a threat to the wolves as they can maneuver away from them and even chase the grizzly off if they’re determined enough. But they don’t want the confrontation if they can avoid it.

The valley this black wolf is looking into is prime grizzly country. It’s deep and full of brush, trees and large boulders, just the place a well fed bear would hole up. The wolf’s body language says he’s not alarmed or at least hasn’t caught any scent from the bear yet but he’s carefully watching for the slightest movement. Magpies lifting, brush moving when there’s no wind, any telltale signs that the grizzly has decided to come back and feed again. All appears to be quiet so he may lie down here to keep watch, even catch a little nap himself.

Quiet times like this are rare in the wolves life. Carefully looking into the darkness at the bottom of the ravine and feeling at ease, it’s time for a rest. Soon enough it’ll be time to hunt again.

Buffalo Spawn

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Boy oh boy oh boy are we here at *The Institute excited. It’s Spring and time for one of the greatest, if not the most unlikely, spectacles ever to occur in Nature. We’re talking about the Buffalo Spawn that happens every April along the Firehole river in Yellowstone National Park. This phenomenon was first discovered several years ago by one of our free range wildlife photographers working on a separate project in Yellowstone and we have been fortunate to document this amazing process ever since.

The Institute, as has been noted many times in the past, has many ongoing projects underway at all times and the one our photographer was working on at the time this spawning phenomenon was noted, was a study on why river banks are just wide enough to accommodate the water that flowed through them and no wider, when he noticed strange behavior in the buffalo herds. The buffalo began gathering at the riverside jostling and shoving each other until they began to frantically enter the water and begin moving up-stream. Sometimes singly or in pairs, cows and bulls alike struggled upstream against the current in a single-minded desire to reach the shallows at the headwaters of the river to begin their spawning.

No obstacle was too great to keep them from moving ever upstream, clamoring over rocks and boulders, leaping mightily up water falls, their coats and horns glistening in the sun as they swam exhaustedly against the raging current, struggling until they reached that final tributary where they had been created many years ago. There under the light of a full moon the cows released their eggs and the bulls their sperm and as the river slowly allowed fertilization the eggs containing the new buffalos began to tumble downstream through rapids and wide gentle bends until catching up against a snag lying across the  stream, or a pebble bed where they could sink into safety amongst the stones and germinate, the eggs rested, began to grow, and thereby begin a new generation of buffalo.

Life is never a sure thing here in Yellowstone and the eggs were at constant risk of being found and devoured by predators. Wolves hungry as only wolves can be searched constantly along the riverbanks looking for egg clusters that had attached to rocks or plants along the shore and finding them, greedily devoured them for the protein that future young buffalo calves could provide them while in their embryonic state.

 Grizzlies could be seen out in the middle of the river casually turning over great snags, the remains of giant trees that had fallen into the river to float downstream until they lodged themselves in the shallows and found a permanent home. Ripping the snags apart with their tremendously strong forearms and sharp claws, the egg clusters of the new buffalo generation were easy pickings for the mammoth beasts to find and consume.

But life always finds a way. And many of the eggs escaped detection and over time developed into their next phase of development which of course is the ‘buffpole’ stage where they began to grow their little hooves and tails and assume the shape we recognize as ‘Buffalo’. By now they had been fed steadily by the nutrients in the river and were beginning to break free from the egg sack that had enveloped them. If the light was just right these small fry could be seen forming little groups or herds, galloping from one place of safety in the water to another, gaining strength and nimbleness needed to leave the confines of the river and move on to land to begin their new lives as the Giants of the Plains, the buffalo.

Once established on land the new young buffalo, now known as ‘calves’, would be adopted by an adult female or ‘cow’ and be nursed and shown how to graze. They grew rapidly and were now totally independent of the river from which they formed. Yet you can still see some remnants of the behavior established in their early stages, such as when they gather in large groups or ‘herds’ and run thundering from one place to another for no apparent reason. This is a hold over from their schooling behavior when they were freshly formed fry in the river, and now it has become established as part of their genetic behavior on the land.

If you want to observe this spawning behavior of the buffalo you must hurry to Yellowstone because it doesn’t last long. Once it starts the buffalo are tireless in their obsession to get upstream and complete the spawning process that ensures that the new herd will be replenished. It is often over before you arrive, in fact if you are reading this now in May, you’ve already missed it. Sorry, but we can assure you that it does happen as proven by the huge number of buffalo seen grazing in the vast meadows of Yellowstone National park. After all where else could they have come from.

* Note: For those of you unfamiliar with The Institute and what it does, please see the page labeled The Institute on the Menu Bar above. That should explain everything. You shouldn’t have one single question remaining regarding The Institute after reading it. None. For those of you favored few who already know about the Institute, Nevermind. Return to your daily activities. Thank you for your support.

Stone Eagle

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Back many eons ago when Mother Earth was still forming and changing and the people and animals were unsure of who they should be, many of the creatures we know today and think we understand had not yet assumed their final shape and purpose.

During that time there was no thing such as good and bad. There was light and dark but not yet, goodness or evil. The people being the latest creations were also the smartest but they were weak and easy prey for those much bigger and stronger. They couldn’t out run the wolves, or fight with the giant bears, or hide from the eagles who would come and steal their children. And although they were many at first they soon saw that they would be gone, wiped out, by these other animals if something didn’t happen to help them soon.

They called out to Mother Earth saying “Why don’t you help us. They are killing us. They steal our children and we can do nothing. Soon we will all be gone.” Mother Earth replied “But I gave you everything you need to survive and make this earth your own. It is why you were the last to arrive. You have the power to overcome the wolves and the bears and even the mighty eagles who swoop down from the sky. This power lies in your ability to think and plan and work together. No other creatures on earth have this power.”

The people went away and studied her words and saw that this was true. They did something they had never done before and that was gather and choose a leader and decide what to do. They made a plan to capture their worst enemy which was the eagle because it stole their children, catching them as they tried to run and carried them off to their nests to feed their young.

The plan they chose was very smart but very dangerous and it needed someone to put themselves in harm’s way so that all the children would live and be safe from now unto forever. A young man-child of the people came forth and said he would do it, he would be the one. His parents cried and screamed and scratched their flesh in mourning but ultimately gave their blessing and he prepared to be the bravest of the brave that day.

Nearby where the people stayed there was a cave, a magical cave that was filled with living stone. It was fluid and changed shape and color at will. The people knew this but the eagle did not, and it was their plan to have the young man lure the eagle after him by running just fast enough to keep the eagle close but not catch him until they entered the cave. The eagle being arrogant and haughty could only see that the boy was trapped now and easy prey.

The eagle dove into the cave flying faster than it had ever flown before and seeing the boy at the end of the canyon reached forward with its terrible beak to catch him and found itself trapped in the narrow confines of the stone walls. Nothing had ever overcome it before and it began to scream in rage and frustration as the living moving stone slowly enveloped it and turned it into its final eternal shape.

The people were over joyed at their victory and celebrated long into the night, happy that they had saved their children and overcome a mighty enemy. But they were saddened too, because the young man who had so bravely offered himself up to the eagle could not get out of the canyon and he too was slowly turned to stone. He can be seen today as well as the eagle, as a small rounded boulder below the eagle’s wing.

The centuries have added the colors to both the eagle and the boy and they glow in the light of the sun that illuminates the canyon daily, caught there forever in their final struggle. Now visitors to this hallowed ground walk past and note how the stone looks like an eagle but they have no knowledge of the incredibly heroic struggle that took place here in the beginning of time, as the people took the first steps towards taking their place as the favored ones and becoming the caretakers of this earth.

We know this place as Antelope canyon and you can go there and see the eagle and the boy and watch the colors change but you can’t stay long enough to see the stone move.

Observations of a Wolf

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Observations9729

Wolves are a lot like you and me. When they’re out of regular wolf stuff to do, like running down a buffalo, or snarling at somebody who gets too close at the wrong time, or they’re out of sorts because their kid didn’t make the honor roll, but they’re not at that point where they have to go bite something, they find a quiet place to sit and think and  watch what other folks are doing.

That’s what Rodin is doing at the moment. He’s part of the Fishing Wolves* pack at the Wolf refuge in West Yellowstone and he’s already caught his rainbow for the day and got to eat the entire thing without having to share it with the alpha male. That’s a stroke of luck he hadn’t counted on because the alpha usually takes it away from him before he gets a chance to do much more than hold it in his mouth for a moment.

HIs stomach full and his work done for the moment, he gets to go to his favorite place, the high grass in the boulder field and watch what every one else is doing. The alpha is picking on another young wolf today, running him through his paces, teaching him who the bull duck in the pond is, or in this case who the alpha male is in the wolf pack. That cute young grey is looking at him again. He has to play it cool though so the alpha doesn’t notice. Since they’re in an enclosure it’s not like they can sneak away or anything and right now the thought of the beating he’ll get if he returns her interest doesn’t make him feel very amorous.

Stellar jays have been squawking over something, hopping from the lower branches to the ground and back up again, agitated enough it’s causing the pine cones to fall off the branches and rattle around on the ground. It’s drawing in the magpies who’ll make short work of running them off. Whatever it is it’s outside of the fence so it doesn’t affect him.

It’s a perfect day in the neighborhood. The sun’s out but because it’s mid-September it’s not too hot and the wind is just enough to move the grass back and forth a little. It feels good rubbing up against his side. If nobody notices he might just lay down for a nap, something he doesn’t get a chance to do very often. Maybe he’ll dream of running over the long rolling hills up in the Lamar or setting off with the young grey to find their own territory. After all, the skies the limit when you’re dreaming.

* http://www.bigshotsnow.com/2013/05/05/