Who Am I?
Children hold me tight, to calm their fears at night.But if I draw too close, adults are filled with fright.
These pictures were taken at Yellowstone National Park in the fall of 2006 or 2011.
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Who Am I?
Children hold me tight, to calm their fears at night.But if I draw too close, adults are filled with fright. |
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Finally!
After not having seen any bears in Yellowstone the previous year, I was excited to see my first on the trip (and certainly not the last). I had been watching a group of bighorn sheep come down a rocky hill when this black bear came ambling along far down the road. As I walked down and settled in with my telephoto lens, a small group of us watched as the bear wandered over to an old carcass of some large mammal. The flesh had long since been devoured, so the bear began to work on the skeleton to get at the marrow in the bones.
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Crunch Crunch Crunch
Once an idling diesel pickup truck left, it was suddenly so quiet that you could actually hear the crunch crunch crunch as the bear began snacking on the ribs. Black bears are omnivores and eat both animals and plants. While seeing a bear so casually crunching bones is an impressive reminder of the animal’s strength, plants make up the majority of their diet in Yellowstone and you’re much more likely to see them snacking on the nuts in the cones of the white pine.
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A Dog and His Bone
I watched this bear for quite some time as it worked over the old carcass. After eating out in the open, the bear dragged off the carcass a ways and then took this large bone and settled down under the tree, lackadaisically gnawing on it much like a dog with his bone.
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No Escape
After chewing on the carcass, the bear eventually walked back down towards the buffalo wallows and rubbed the left side of its head in the dirt (you can see how brown the fur is on that side of its head). Some of the others around me mentioned that it had down the same thing the night before, so it may have been trying to soothe an itchy scalp.
Satisfied with its romp in the dirt, the bear started back towards the road but came to a stop. A group of people down that way were blocking its path with more folks popping in to take pictures. Common sense eventually took over and the crowd parted, and the bear wasted no time in running across the road and away from the madding crowd. As the bear departed, it was time for me to depart as well. The bear had his dinner and now it was time for mine. |
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Ro-Ro-Rosie
There have been multiple generations of Rosies in Yellowstone, a name given to a line of female bears that has stayed near the Roosevelt area. According to a park ranger, the previous Rosie didn’t appear to have survived the previous winter, she had lost a lot of fur before she hibernated. The new Rosie is a fine mother, looking carefully after her two cubs (who are following her just out of frame). She’s been tagged in her ears to help identify her, although its hard to tell its a tag in this picture since it matches the bits of brown leaves in her fur.
The picture is a little bit of a nod to wildlife photographer Nick Nichols, whose work in National Geographic (particularly his shots in Africa, such as this spectacular elephant shot) inspires me. The light was low and the bear moving, so I tried to capture the feel of movement with a low shutter speed and panning with the bear instead of trying to go for sharpness and freezing its motion. Not a completely successful experiment but something I’d like to play more with when the opportunity presents itself. |
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Little Chubbies
The winters in Wyoming are long and cold, so even the cubs have to be fattened up by the end of the fall to survive their hibernation. The cute little cubs that were born in the spring are still cute, just not quite so little. They are still much smaller than adults, so the mother remains protective and will chase away any adult males that get too close. These particular cubs were following their mother up the hill (she’s just out of frame to the right), she always kept a close eye on her little ones and sent them scurrying up the trees at the first sign of trouble.
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Taking Advantage
In a world where might makes right, being small wouldn’t seem to have any advantages. Indeed, whenever the mother of this cub and its twin sensed danger from another adult bear in the area, she’d send the little ones scurrying up into the trees.
When it came time to feed, however, this little cub discovered its small size gave it an advantage. As they fatten themselves for the winter, one of the bears prime food sources is the nuts stored in the cone of the white pine. Bears scavenge the cones from the forest floor, they raid the caches of the red squirrels, they climb the trees to eat the cones in the trees, and they even knock off branches to get to the cones on smaller branches they can’t reach. When the mother sent the two cubs into this tree, one stayed about half way up, but this one went straight to the top. Even after the other cub climbed down and began to wander with the mother, this one stayed up in the treetop, happy and content. If you look at the picture, it becomes obvious why. The larger bears couldn’t climb into the thin branches at the top of the tree, so this part still had plenty of pine cones, ripe for the picking for the adventurous cub. Like a kid in a candy store, there were more cones at the treetop than the cub could possibly eat, but it stayed for quite some time, feasting on the pine cone treasure it had discovered. |