View allAll Photos Tagged yellowstone_wolf
Here is another image of this curious wolf that we encountered a couple of years ago while in Yellowstone National Park.
Thank you for your views, faves and comments.
This black wolf was searching for scraps from a kill that had been close to the road. The rangers had moved the kill earlier because of the danger of it being close to the road and humans. When we spotted this wolf there was only two others cars there which also made it a wonderful sighting :-).
A young, curious wolf looks back before jotting away. It seemed curious about the excited photographers that were nervously shooting away with their cameras.
Wolf that broke off of a pack of 6, walking in a heavy snowstorm. Canon 500 4.5L fd and 1.4x tele fd
Just returned from Yellowstone. Winter is a great time to visit the park, but dont forget your longjohns. It was -27 and stayed around zero most of the time.
Yellowstone National Park, three years it took, and finally the best luck in the world. Male black wolf from Wapiti Pack, North Yellowstone, near Phantom lake. The black wolf is a gray wolf by species. The black coloration is a melanistic color variant. A gene mutation know as K locus is responsible for the dark variant found in both dogs and wolves.
My shot. ok, my wife took it. this lil guy was running right at us, I was using a 500mm and it was too close at that point, thankfully wife had a smaller lens. will still pretend I took it though.
A lone wolf peers at me from the timber. Their eyes are amazing. Their intelligence is palpable. Taken from a distance with an 800mm lens, cropped. October, 2020.
alpha female was just passing through, bison turned out to not be on the menu....
canon 500mm with 1.4x tele and a Sony a6000
A memorable encounter with a few wolves in Yellowstone some years ago. This particular wolf demonstrated curiosity as it looked our way. I believe it was a young wolf.
This very large, radio-collared "bronze" colored wolf is a member of Yellowstone's wild Wapiti Lake pack. The pack had been availing itself of the generous nutrition in the carcass of a bison that dropped dead near the road, by happenstance also near several large pullouts where people could park safely and set up their scopes and cameras to watch numerous animals - Wapitis, coyotes, foxes, ravens, an eagle - take turns chowing down on the late winter boon.
The Wapitis are one of the largest packs in Yellowstone. Their home territory is Hayden Valley, much farther south along the Yellowstone River than where this photo was taken. They'd been spending a lot of the winter in this area, which is the territory of a couple of other wolf packs. Somehow they avoided the territorial wars that in fact result in more wolf deaths than any other cause.
This day, the alpha wolves and most of the other adults had departed for Hayden Valley, I would guess to re-establish their dens there in anticipation of the arrival of pups in the coming few weeks. Those left behind (who may catch up, or they may use the opportunity to establish a new pack) are mostly last spring's grown pups. In any case they were full of vim and vinegar, playing gleefully with their full bellies in ample evidence.
Photo taken with a long telephoto from a safe 90-100 yards, as required by Park policy, and cropped to remove negative space. The wolves showed no sign they were at all disturbed by the presence of people. And all the people were all unable to remove the happy grins from their faces at the opportunity to watch such magnificent animals at relatively close range.
We've been having a great time on our Winter in Yellowstone Workshop. One of our highlights was being able to observe this beautiful wolf! We believe she is one of the members of the Wapiti Pack.
It took consultation with Yellowstone wolf experts from the Wolf Project and others, but I finally identified this female wolf as a member of the Wapiti Lake Pack, the same pack that graced me with their presence twice this past winter. This location, east from Mount Haynes and across the Madison River from the road, is on the opposite side of the park from where most of the rest of the Wapitis are now, which in turn is quite far south of where they were last winter when I photographed them. They're one of the biggest packs in the park, and obviously very wide-ranging.
Reportedly this bison died of injuries inflicted by another bison. It apparently was not hunted down by wolves but they and many other birds and mammals scavenged it.
There's more mystery with this particular wolf, though. She was by herself; a dark wolf has also been seen on this carcass, but generally wolves hang with larger family branches than two individuals. Also, as is clear in photos of her standing up (to be posted soon), she has prominent nipples, indicating that she either has pups now (though her mammaries did not appear engorged in the photos, which they would have been after as long an absence from sucklings as she spent working on this carcass were she actively nursing) or has had pups some prior season. Clearly she's not an alpha (who, in the case of the Wapitis, is pure white except for a large black dot on the top of her tail near her rump), so this is good evidence that not only the alpha females bear pups in a wolf pack.
Earlier this month in Yellowstone NP this wolf was keeping both eyes on me before he decided to go back into the forest.
Terri and I had a successful wildlife tour in Yellowstone NP today. We never thought we’d be lucky enough to run into a wolf pack on today’s journey, but we did. I will be posting many more of the pack coming down the hillside, but this juvenile was the best I could do as he crossed in front of me to get over the snowy road. #yellowstonenp #greywolf #wolvesinyellowstone
Last week I was lucky enough to get this photo of a wolf in Yellowstone National Park's Lamar Valley.
A lone wolf (the Lamar pack alpha male, I was told by a Park Guide) checking the willow stands along the Lamar River in Yellowstone National Park in May of 2011.
When wolves were reintroduced into the Yellowstone ecosystem in the mid-1990s, there were few willows along the Lamar River. After humans hunted wolves in Yellowstone to nonexistence 50 years earlier, the elk population exploded, and herds over-browsed the willow stands. Soon, the willow were nearly gone and there were other deleterious effects on the habitat, too. Within a decade after being reintroduced, the wolves had set that right and vegetation along the Lamar River valley was returning. Elk populations in Yellowstone declined of course, but they have also retreated away from the river valleys and are not threatened. Definitely, they are not browsing the vegetation as much. An old story, but one that I love.
I was also told by one of the Park guides that several days previously to this a lone wolf had brought down and eaten an adult elk. Ravens joined in, too, I bet.
We were in the park very early last week when we saw a wolf out across a meadow. We stopped in a pullout to watch it, and when we did, it started trotting toward us. It went into the road and checked us out through the window. This is a highly cropped image from a long lens.
As always, I managed to find a spot alone, and away from the others as this injured wolf tried to make her way through the deep snow and across the road. We made eye contact...and I know that, as of last week, she was with a pack of two other females, who chased away the male she was crossing the road to meet on this day.
As in years past, I’m kicking off the New Year with an incredible adventure in the world’s very first national park—Yellowstone! This annual tradition has become one of my absolute favorites, and I can’t wait to reunite with my wild and furry friends in this snowy wonderland.
actionphototours.com/workshops/yellowstone-tetons-winter-...
As the sun sets behind it, a young wolf looks curiously our way.
Thanks for your views, comments and faves.
Gray Wolf (Canis lupus) numbered 1228F by the Yellowstone Wolf Project. She is the alpha female in the Shrimp Lake Pack. She is pictured here alongside Soda Butte Creek in Lamar Valley.
There are groups of wolf spotters that stay or live near the park in the winter months and are in the park daily to spot the various packs.
Posting this as a tribute to all the wolves who have lost their lives to a hunter's bullet just outside the YNP entrance. This is 889f, whom I photographed in the park. I was so overwhelmed at just seeing her that I neglected to press the shutter until she was right on top of me. I got just one shot of her like this.
While stuck in a "bison jam", this guy popped out of the woods and ran right passed my car
Yellowstone National Park
Top shot is of a typical Yellowstone coyote, the bottom is of a Yellowstone wolf (Wapiti Lake pack), side-to-side to illustrate the differences in face shapes and body builds.
What is not demonstrated by these two images is that the coyote is about 1/3 the size of the wolf. Nonetheless, at a distance especially for those not familiar with the appearance and behavior of these canine cousins, it can be difficult to know which one you're looking at. Wishful thinking guides many Yellowstone visitors to declare a coyote sighting to be a wolf, because coyotes are common in many parts of North America, whereas wolves are rare everywhere, and occupy less than 1% of their original habitat.
Lead Alpha Male and Female wear collars in almost all Yellowstone packs.Very interesting stories of wolf encounter at: wolves.wordpress.com/2006/11/28/yellowstone-wolf-pack-enc...
The Hayden Pack continues to inhabit the area around Canyon, and is seen by many people, although as the summer progressed they were found more and more in the Hayden Valley. The pack has a very light gray alpha female, 540F. People called her “white.” The alpha male (540M) is large and light gray, and the rest of the pack is fairly light colored too.
The Haydens are not only the pack most likely to be seen close up, it is the pack most subjected to human intrusion on its space. There have been many occasions when they were close to large numbers of people, such as when they kill an elk in the middle of Alum Creek, next to the Park highway. Individual and small groups have also run into them or approached them at close range even when they were some distance from the road. One couple walked right into their den site this year. Perhaps more than one did, but did not report it.