YELLOWSTONE'S WILD WORLD

I have been going through the hard drives I have already filled up since we left home in early March (at about 5 GB/minute they fill up fast) and deleting clips. While I was doing that I found a couple of things I meant to show you and didn’t. So this post is kind of a hodge-podge of unrelated events.

Early in July we were lucky enough to find two different Williamson’s sapsucker nests. Williamson’s sapsuckers are related to the better known yellow-bellied sapsucker. Their habits are similar, they are a type of woodpecker, but the Williamson’s has a very small distribution by comparison. They build their nests in tree holes. They are also prettier, especially the male. Like other sapsuckers they drill sap wells in trees, which they drink from, but insects are also an important part of their diet especially when feeding their young. Both the adult male and female spent many, many hours bringing insects to their babies.

Something happened to the female in one nest. During the last three weeks the male fed the babies completely alone. The young successfully fledged though and the male didn’t seem too warn out.

The other sapsucker nest was on the Blacktail Plateau dirt road, which is a great place to look for bird nests.

We spent one day two weeks ago filming cutthroat trout feeding in the Yellowstone River. (I’ll show you those photos later.) We found some trout feeding close to shore near an island. We didn’t realize it at first but there were 3 pairs of Canada geese with goslings on the island. They came over to our side of the island, and after feeding for a while, decided to take a swim.

I am working on a movie about cutthroat trout so I spent a lot of time at Trout Lake this summer. During most of the time I spent there I filmed trout underwater spawning. But I spent a couple of days filming the cutthroat trout going up a small waterfall. I don’t know how much energy it takes for them to make it up the waterfall but I do know they don’t usually make it the first time. Notice the yellowish area on the lower part of this fishes body. He scraped it on rocks as he fell back down the waterfall.