Snow Tracking

While Bette was doing camp chores I was supporting a Snow Tracking class. Of course it snowed each day covering up all the tracks. I guess you do snow tracking after it snows.

I did learn a lot about animal tracks, gaits, and investigating such things from the instructorJim Halfpenny. Jim's well versed in tracking, winter ecology, and mammal carnivores large and small.

We did find a few tracks in the afternoon field sessions. The class made plaster casts of coyote tracks in a plowed pullout (picture below).

t's quite a process. You try to clean the track as well as you can. Then spray it with this wax, covering all the snow to seal the track. Quickly mix up some plaster to milkshake consistency, and gently pour it into the track before the plaster sets. Cover with a plastic bag anchored by a perimeter of snow blocks. Cover the whole thing with snow to insulate, so the plaster sets. Wait a half hour or so...

We had hoped to find wolf tracks, but settled for a wolf. The black wolf, probably a Druid Pack wolf because of the mange, was by an elk carcass above the Yellowstone River. The wolf was waiting for us to leave, and is standing below the large conifer in the middle of the picture. You can double click to get a larger view. I took it with the zoom on our little point and shoot.

Jim also shared with us the website of his friend Lily up in Ely, Minnesota. Lily is a black bear, and has a webcam in her den where you can see her and her new born cubs.

Back at the Ranch

I've had "camp duty" for the last two days. Yes, that means scrubbing toilets!

It occurred to us that we haven't yet posted any pictures of where we are living. These photos are of the Bunkhouse. It was originally the bunkhouse for the ranch hands when the bison were being raised here in order to try to save them from extinction (at the turn of the century only 25 were left in the park). When the Yellowstone Association first started offering classes here in 1979 everyone stayed in the bunkhouse. Now we have cabins and a bathhouse but the classes, cooking, and hanging out still all take place here. We'll post some pictures of our cabin and the bathhouse soon.

The kitchen. There are two sinks but it can get pretty busy when a class of twelve plus the instructor and the four volunteers are all making dinner. Notice how well caffeinated we are!

Dave blogging! (or maybe reading about either Illini or UVA basketball)
This is the classroom. We have the usual digital projectors, whiteboards, and a nice flat screen TV for either watching DVDs, Videos (yes we have too many of those to not have a VCR) or power points. My favorite part is that there are many bookcases full of natural history and Yellowstone history books to be read.
In the summer this is a second classroom but in the winter it is the boot room. Everyone stores their indoor shoes by the front door and leaves their wet boots on the racks. Inevitably as soon as you put your boots on to go outside you realize that you've left something critical (like lunch) back in the kitchen. Unless you can convince someone to play fetch, off go the boots, on go the indoor shoes, the lunch is retreived, off go the indoor shoes and on go the boots!

Days off!

We had Thursday and Friday off this week. Thursday was a grocery shopping and relaxing day. Assisting the class was great fun and I was sorry to see everyone go but it was also pretty intense. I was up at 5:00 each morning to make coffee, eat breakfast and get the bus defrosted for a 6:45 departure to look for the wolves at sunrise when they are most active. The days finally wound down at around 9:00 each night. Even Friday was pretty relaxing, we went for a ski and found some nice flat rocks to eat lunch on.

Yellowstone Wolves

Last week I assisted a class called Yellowstone Wolves. Someone must have told the wolves we were coming because they put on quite a show for us. The Druid pack has five eligible females, we were able to see them from the road with spotting scopes. Sadly, they have mange and look a bit bedraggled but that did not stop a very nice looking grey male from hanging around nearby. It is getting close to mating season and the assumption was that he was hoping for a chance to woo one of the females. Up on a hill on the other side of the road were two other males. At first we could not see them but could hear them howl. Later in the day a big horn sheep came running down the hill where it found a nice cliff to hang out on. A short while later a black wolf came down the hill and crossed the road moving towards the five sisters. One sister was in a bit of a ravine so that we could not see her but it seemed like he might have gone over to flirt with her. He wasn't there very long, however, before he recrossed the road and went back up the hill. Unfortunately all of this took place far enough away that I couldn't get any good photos.

One other day of class we walked up to the pens (see photo above) where the wolves lived when they were first brought to the park (1995). The idea of using the pen was to acclimate the wolves to this area so they wouldn't run back to Canada. Oddly, when they first opened the gate to the pen the wolves not only did not flee north, they didn't even leave the pen at all. Finally, the biologists decided to put a carcass outside the pen to lure them out. As they hauled the carcass up the hill to the pens they saw one of the males out on the ridge ahead of them. They hurried down to a creek bed below and made their way back to their truck!

Another field trip was to an abandoned den. The hole that the mother wolf excavated was quite impressive. Sadly, it was only used one season, presumably because the pups born there did not survive. They were last seen near a swollen riverbank and may have drowned. Apparently mothers will not return to a den if the first time they use it the pups do not live. If the pups had survived that first time the mother might have continued to use the den again even if she had some years in which the pups didn't make it. There is something about that first time that is very important

Yellowstone Association in the news

http://www.usatoday.com/travel/destinations/2010-01-14-yellowstone-in-winter_N.htm

USA today ran an article on Yellowstone in Winter. The classes they describe are part of the lodging and learning programs. The participants stay at the Mammoth Hotel rather than here at the buffalo ranch. When they are out in the field they stop here for lunch and one of our jobs is to make sure the coffee and hot water for tea or cocoa are ready when they arrive. In exchange we often get the leftovers from their sack lunches. They always leave us the raisins but occasionally we get lucky and wind up with chocolate chip cookies or potato chips. We also invite them into our bookstore and try to talk to them into becoming members of the Yellowstone association. I haven't watched the video attached to the article yet but one of our fellow volunteers is interviewed on it.

Three Mooses

I was skiing alone (Bette was on a wolf class) late afternoon on the Bannock Trail in the northeast corner of the Park when I come upon a cow moose and what I thought was its calf in the middle of the ski trail. It was difficult to see the second moose, which I thought was the calf because the one moose was between me and it. I could see eight legs.

This made me nervous. I had just read "The Better to Eat You With", a book on predator-prey relationships. The author had described a cow moose they nicknamed the Assassin because of its aggressive protection of its calf. I thought I should at least get a picture before turning around, and fell over as I went to get my backpack. Maybe this reassured the moose that I wasn't all that dangerous.

Then I see a big head with large antlers move into the trail. What was a bull doing there? I do not think they usually hang out together. Maybe he just wanted to use the trail too. Anyway in the picture the bull is on the left, but the spruce branch blocks a view of his antlers. Moose drop their antlers, but he still had his.

More Bison

Bison like to use the roads. Bette saw this fellow on her way to skiing.