Friday, July 20, 2007

More Wolf Sightings

So after first seeing the one wolf Wednesday night, I've been back three times; Thursday morning and night, and Friday morning. On Thursday morning, I saw the Alpha Male and Alpha Female of the pack hanging out on the hillside. They were just lounging around and then got up and left around 10:30am, two hours after I had gotten there.

In the first picture, the Alpha Male and Female can be seen lying down in front of the double-trunked tree at the top of the small hill just inside the shade behind some sagebrush. It's hard to tell as they look like gray rocks, but compare the photo the the following ones and the difference you see is the wolves.



In this photo, the the right and in front of the double-trunked tree, the Alpha Female is standing up. Again, due to the distance she appears to be a gray rock.


In the next two shots, I hope the wolf in the picture is pretty evident. It's the Alpha Female just before she took off. I missed a picture of her as she passed across the lit up green area in the foreground, but she was lit up all white like a ghost. It was awesome.



Last night, I saw the two beta wolves of the pack, but only for a few fleeting seconds as they dashed across the little valley. I didn't have time to react, let alone get a picture. But just before I saw them, you could hear a faint wolf howl. Very sweet!!

Sadly though, this morning the wolves were gone. Just before I got there last night, two pups were seeing crossing the little valley in the pictures. Then about 9pm, after I had left, the people there saw two hikers on the other side of the river, on a closed trail in forbidden territory to protect the wolves. That was the second night in a row with hikers. And also last night a male wolf, the beta, was seen near the road but some people watching got out of their cars and approached them and spooked him.

I was talking to Bill, the head wolf ranger this morning, and he's worried that the increased human activity has spooked them away from their den and primary rendezvous site, and that they now have moved to their secondary site about 2 miles away in Hayden Valley where the closest view of them is about 1500 yards compared to 200. So that really sucks that some stupid people had to ruin it for everyone else. Oh well.

This is a picture of the people who were watching for wolves last night.



Tonight, I'll post up some artsy-fartsy shots of the scenery that I've taken. Later ya'll.