YELLOWSTONE'S WILD WORLD

Yesterday I decided that my goal was to photograph a black bear in wildflowers and so I headed over to Floating Island Lake area where the bear had been the night before. No bears when I arrived but the flowers were aglow in the early morning light and I found a female grouse wandering nearby.  Too close because it kept following me. After hanging out with the grouse for a few minutes I walked down the road to photograph some wildflowers, close up, with the big lens.  Along the way I heard something and looked to my right and found a black bear in a ditch, next to the road, standing up to have a look.  All I could see was the bear’s head and he did not look happy.  I backed away, etching that bear’s expression in my memory because no way was I going to stop for a photo, and went out into the meadow on the opposite side of the road.  I worked my way along, photographing different flowers and crossing a muddy ditch so as to stay out of the bear’s way, and found myself in the most wonder field of flowers.When done with the flowers and carefully heading back towards the car, I discovered that the bear had gone on up the hill and was heading towards the wildflowers.  I was pretty excited to get him in the flowery landscape but it proved difficult because the foliage is so high that he hides behind leaves and flower petals.  Worked and worked to get a clear shot and maybe got a few but haven’t been able to look them yet.  Because later in the day we had a huge surprise. The bear moved away and I thought that it had gone on behind Floating Island and so went back to the flowers.  When, at last, I was leaving, there was a bear jam around the curve and he had made his way across without me seeing.  And, here I had been up on the hill in the flowers the whole time. People were parked in the road and so I called the rangers (something that I most likely will not do again) and went up to photograph the bear in more wildflowers.  This time he was more cooperative and I am sure those shots turned out.  When the ranger arrived he made everyone keep moving their cars, even if they were sitting inside, while the bear grazed about 75 yards away in the meadow.  The ranger wanted our cars 100 yards from the bear – he is the only one in this park that does this and it makes for mass confusion because the other rangers allow us to see the bears and to stay in our cars if we are a reasonable distance and the bear is just grazing.  There is absolutely no figuring this guy out or pleasing him – everything is wrong and he would like, in the future, for me to just drive by the bear jams and not try and get photos.  I might as well hang up the camera!  Not that I like the jams but there are some shots that are important to me and that I have been working hard to get.  Oh well.  I work with the situation the best ways possible. So, I left and drove for awhile until deciding to head towards Mammoth.  But, along the way, I encountered other photographers near Floating Island and they had their eyes on a Williams Sapsucker nest, which, apparently is rare. And, so we set up to photograph the sapsucker coming in to feed the babies.

Five photographers standing around a broken and dead aspen tree, near the road, can cause quite a commotion.  We had people stopping, expecting to see a bear.  Some people were just great and parked at a pullout way down the road and were so disappointed to learn that we were shooting a bird.  For others I tried yelling, “bird,” and flapping my wings, which was quite effective.  One man stood next to the road and let people know that we were photographing a bird, even showing them a picture of the bird. But, many did not believe us and had to come to see for themselves, the rangers included.  They were satisfied and disappointed when seeing the back of the cameras and some still didn’t believe us and so they wandered around looking for the bear that we were hiding.  For hours it was mass chaos and a little amusing.  Some folks were actually excited to see the bird and a few even stopped to photograph it when it came into the nest to feed. We had been photographing the bird for about three hours and were kind of winding down and standing around talking.  I was telling some story when I interrupted it with, “There is a bear behind you.”

Everyone jumped, grabbed their cameras and began going backwards, while trying to get a few shots.  The bear was coming our way and we didn’t have much room to move.  And, I had to run back for my gatorade so the bear wouldn’t get it but have no idea where it ended up.  Hopefully someone found the bottle.  It was just confusion and before you knew it people were everywhere, parked in the road and all over.  We had no where to go, except to just try and stay ahead of the bear and work back towards the car.  He was kind of funny, really, because, he could have cared less about us but for some odd reason had decided that instead of going where there were no people, he was going to make everyone get out of his way. I got a few shots – most a cropped pretty well.As soon as traffic allowed, I got away from Floating Island and headed to Trout Lake for a hike.  Was hoping to see otters but no go.  Although just a wonderful hike and it was nice to run into some friends. I found this golden eye on the end of a log, framed by the tall grasses and decided to be a bit artistic.