Otters are Amazing!

I finally saw an otter. After a morning of watching swimming animals that all ended up being ducks, beaver, or deer, I made my way to trout lake. Here, I saw the resident otter way across the lake, but she soon came back with a live fish, crawled up onto a log, and proceeded to take bites out of the still flipping fish. And I watched as she ate the entire fish – head, fins, everything! I could hear the bones crunching as she ate…which explains why their scats are so full of fishbones. She was awesome – how many animals look so cuddly AND are vicious predators?

Further around the lake I found why it was such a good place for otter, the inlet was absolutely packed with spawning cutthroat trout. From bank to bank, the little rocky stream was full of trout fighting the current to move upstream. I saw one lose it and tumble back towards the lake, hitting several rocks as he went. I suppose this is what our study sites would look like if the invasive lake trout hadn’t killed the cutthroats.

Trout Lake itself is one of those lovely alpine lakes surrounded by meadows that makes you feel like someone has plucked you out of your own life and dropped you in the opening scene of the Sound of Music. Yes, I may have sung musicals while I was up there. Hey, you have to make noise to be safe and keep the bears away.

And the otters are pretty good at taking care of fish…here’s all that’s left (the roe) of one the otter got to.

Looks like the otters got to this bison as well. They can be vicious, don’t you know?

More Animals

Harlequin Ducks at the rapids

Baby bison - not ugly like big bison

Western Grebe

Two wolves along a hilltop!

200 Feet off the Road

Yellowstone being a major tourist destination, there’s a fair chance that your view of a geyser/elk/baby coyote will be blocked by several hundred people or a large campervan. Before coming out here, I had figured that it would be pretty easy to escape the crowds by going a half mile or so down the trail. Wrong, said Jamie (my boss), you only need to go about 200 feet from the road to have a trail to yourself.

And I didn’t think that people were that lazy, but indeed it is true. Today I went a bit further than 200 ft from the road, and hiked 10 miles to the bottom of the canyon to where a warm sulfur stream meets the Yellowstone River, and saw only a dozen people the whole way. And the backcountry here really is amazing… the same steam vents, hot springs, and multicolored mineral laden sands found in the crowded geyser basins also lined the canyon walls. And the trail went right by them, or over them, so that you splash through hot spring outflows and slip in the crumbly sinter deposits. Near the roads, geysers are carefully fenced off and signs graphically warn visitors of the danger of falling in. In the backcountry, no one would stop you if you tried to do what this child is doing.

Fishing in the Snow

So, I have not fished (except for catching sunnies of my grandparents dock) for years, but living with a number of fishermen in what is apparently a major fishing destination, I figured this was a good opportunity to pick it back up. So the amphibian crew and I got park fishing licensces today and headed over to the Gibbon River to fish (with such a name, we joked that we would be catching monkeys instead of trout). It took me a while to even remember how to cast…for a while I was swinging my fishing pole all around and the hook was staying right where it was. Eventually I got the hang of it, I think, though I didn’t catch any fish.

Then, it started to snow. But not normal snow. It snowed little fingernail sized snowballs! It was as if the cloud was having a snowball fight with us, and winning. Eventually it stopped snowing, and we headed home, stopping to see coyote pups playing around their den. Little fuzzballs running around in the rocks! Everyone else was much more skilled at fishing than I, so we did end up with an excellent dinner of brown trout.

Mountains and Lakes

The other day I hiked this mountain, which had lovely views and also and awesome name. The entire mountain burned in a forest fire decades ago…any normal person would have named it burning mountain or flame peak or something, but it was not named by normal people. It was named by scientists! They named it Bunsen Peak, because it reminded them of a giant Bunsen burner. Awesome.

Many of the trails out here are well built, with switchbacks, level grades, and boardwalks, to the the point where it’s not that difficult to hike them. It’s a change from the White Mountains, where the prevailing trail building theory seems to be go strait up the rock strewn ridge/gully/stream. Here, on Avalanche Peak, I finally found a real trail, complete with rocks and roots, steepness, erosion, and scrambly gravel. And cute fat marmots. And snowfields to hike up, slide down, and make me wish I had my skis.

And here is the lake I work on. I set hair snares and collect otter scats, and getting to the sites involes a lot of driving around the lovely scenic lake in our boat.

Animals!

Yellowstone being such an intact ecosystem, there are animals, even big mammals, everywhere. Just walking along the roads there are scats and tracks from bears, wolves, and otters too! On a hike up Mt. Washburn, I saw yellow bellied marmots peering at us from the rocks. This is one running away, as they are shy and I am slow with my camera.

Further on, the trail was blocked by these bighorn sheep. These actually had quite small horns. Either they are females, or they are males who will not get any females. We watched them leap around the rocks for 20 minutes or so (they are much better at mountain climbing than I am) before they moved off along the ridge, kindly silouetting themselves against the sky for pictures.

Ground squirrel. Not that exciting, but what other animal can you get such close-ups of?

Bison are all over. They are like the squirrels of Yellowstone. Except they weigh 2,000 lbs and can kill people.

As bison and elk are not much of a challenge to find, my dorm mates and I go birding instead. The tourists give us incredulous looks when we say we are watching cinnamon teal, pelicans, or american dippers, then jump in their cars to chase the latest bear sighting. And yes, I have seen a bear. I have no desire to see any more.

I have not actually seen an otter yet, though I am studying them. Just plenty of scats and dens.

2,700 Miles

So I am settled into my home for the summer. So far I’m the only one in a twenty person dorm, which is somewhat lonely, but others should show up soon (including an amphibian crew!). And I live less than a mile from Yellowstone Lake. And so, here are some highlights from the 2,700 mile cross country drive.

OHIO – Here, you can find drive thru convenience stores. At these fabulous establishments you can buy snacks and drinks without ever leaving your car. However, it is not so fun when you forget there is a bicycle on top of you car and get stuck in the drive-thru. Luckily my bike was unharmed, we bent my roof rack back into shape, and still managed to buy our sodas.

WISCONSIN – Dad and I stopped to see the Mississippi River…since we were up north it really wasn’t a whole lot bigger than the Connecticut. I did do a headstand on the banks though.

SOUTH DAKOTA – is a very large state. Here, we found an odd mix of tacky tourist attractions (such as a corn palace and a giant roaring strobe-lighted T-rex) and miles and miles of empty prarie and rangeland. And the sky really does look bigger over the praries. We could watch thunderstorms coming towards us for miles. We hiked through a prarie in Badlands National Park and could see the grasses blowing in the wind and all of the flowers blooming.

There were also hundreds of prarie dogs, standing atop their holes and giving alarm calls. Apparently they are a keystone species.

And my dad wanted to visit an old missile silo and an air force base, so we did. And there was quite a stark contrast between the state of the facilities/funding that the air force has compared to the National Park Service.

And we went in a cave. Caves are fun.

WYOMING – another very large state. I met the person I’m working with and signed my work papers at the University of Wyoming. Their campus has a bronze T-rex statue, which is a lot cooler than a wildcat, I think. We went on a massive grocery shopping trip to get food for the whole summer and filled 3 carts with food.

And now I have made it up to Yellowstone. The otter poop collecting starts Tuesday.