The next morning, all bright and early again, consisted of standing in the wind and cold for about an hour and seeing nothing... Then, we heard on the radio (everybody caries radios so if wolves are sighted everybody watching can come and see too) the Geode pack was out and visible about a 20 minute drive away near Hell Roaring. So, we all packed up and got about a half hour or so of viewing time. The hard part here was finding them. Yes, they were visible, but they were about 2 miles away and you could not see them with the naked eye. Spotting scopes were in order, or in my case, my 2000mm lens combo. Once I finally found them, I took some photos of what wolves more typically look like in the wild ... really, really small dots on distant hills.

Anyway, I thought I would share a couple 'Where's Waldo" or more to the point, where are the wolves, photos that I took of the Geode pack. The black wolf is easy to spot, they grays are not so easy...

I also took a photo of equally distant elk. They were hanging about some Aspen trees. Aspen groves are an important part of the ecosystem here in Yellowstone and as you can see, they are not doing all that well. The trees have a lifespan of about 80 years or so. Wolves were eliminated back in the 1920's and following that, the elk herds were existing at carrying capacity, many starving for that matter, and winter forage was often quite sparse - needles to say, the aspen tree seedlings became elk food. I read a report somewhere that since the wolves have been reintroduced, aspen groves are beginning to recover, but quite honestly I only saw groves which looked like this - deadfall and no young trees.

After another successful day viewing wolves, we finished up the lecture part of the program and it was time to pack up and go home. Pat called Doug Smith so we could have more of a proper visit. On the way, we of course looked for animals. More elk and bison off in the distance, but nothing terribly interesting until I spotted a couple spotted coyotes right off the side of the road just past Tower Junction. To get this photo all I had to do was roll down the window and shoot. I did not even need my big lens. 400mm did just fine :-)

When we got to Doug's office he was all excited because somebody had just e-mailed him a photo of a black wolf and an elk taken during our program. He wanted to show us the photo and guess what? It was my photo that I had posted on Wolf Park's Photo of the Day page! His screen is not very high resolution so I had to show him it was two wolves and the text on the bottom. Anyway, he really liked the photo and said it may make the cover of the next annual report. That would be cool.

Finally we continued our travels out of Mammoth back to Gardner. On the way we saw bison right off the side of the road and in among them were three coyotes hunting small prey, probably rodents of some sort. I got some fun bison photos and then some really neat coyote photos. All from right outside the car or through the window, but this time I used my 500mm lens which with it's image stabilization, did just fine.

		I also got a nice shot of the North Gate of Yellowstone before we left the park. We tried to make it to Jardine, but the road was a bit slippery in the snow. Stopping to take mule deer photos did not help either, but I got some really nice mule deer photos. Pat thinks their ears are especially cute.