end of Yellowstone

This is what a bison thinks about 90 degree September days:

 Can we get that again with feeling this time?

A 300mm lens at 10 feet might be a little too much lens for a bellowing buffalo.

Some of the cows appeared to be entering estrus as the bulls were cordoning off single females when we visited back in August.

There were good numbers of calves around too.

One last pic of the "American Serengeti," hopefully it heralds a few more pics in the near future

Yellowstone Barrow's Goldeneye

Barrow's Goldeneye is not a bird that I expected it to take over 10 years to find in Berrien.  In fact, I don't know that I've ever seen one except in Yellowstone.

That vertical forehead and peak of the crown in front of the eye is very different from Common's triangular head.  I've always thought the goldeneye have bigger shape differences than do the scaup.

A Western Grebe appeared in a small pool on our first day.

This young Gray Jay was the first one I've seen with an SLR.

Finishing off a few other folders are a few more small mammals, first Yellow-bellied Marmot

Next a Chipmunk which is either Least or Uinta (I need to track down the mammal book I had as a kid)

And finally the kids' second favorite animal of the trip (behind the pikas), Uinta Ground Squirrel.

I think they named this one Mushroom, though I believe Stumpy was considered as well.

the biggest deer and the littlest

Since the fires burned much of the mature spruce forest that the moose browse in the winter there's apparently only about 300 moose left in Yellowstone, similar to the number of grizzly bears.  I'd mostly given up on seeing one but on the last morning Ginger spotted one bedded down by the side of the road.

 She had 2 calves bedded down a few feet away.  I was surprised an animal the size of a moose would have twins but I suppose bears generally do too.

 After about 20 minutes she led them away.

Much smaller than the moose calves were these mule deer fawns, the only mule deer of the trip. They'd bounded across the road about 10 miles earlier.

Varmints. But cute varmints.

The kids' favorite animal of the whole trip to South Dakota were the prairie dogs.  They named this one Grassy.

 Ginger and I suggested Skillet or Pancake.  I didn't point out the flattened one a little ways up the road.

This fat bastage was christened Pipsqueak.

 Apparently sitting on your ass in the sun is tiring.

 My kingdom for a golden eagle right about now.

I'm not sure if these ones got named.

Prairie dogs are apparently a keystone species, they keep mesquite and brushy stuff from taking over the grasslands.  I was hoping to see some of the higher on the foodchain associated species like Burrowing Owl or Black-footed Ferret but no such luck, closest I could come was this (I'm guessing Thirteen-lined) ground-squirrel

Custer Mountain Goats

I've only seen Mountain Goats once prior to our last trip out west (on a family trip to Glacier National Park when I was a kid) so I was pretty surprised to see a Mountain Goat bolt across the road in the Needles section of Custer.  It turned out that a baby was right behind it.  They nibbled grass along the road before someone tried to take full-frame pics with their iPhone from a few feet away.  The two scrambled away and settled down well away from the road to wait out the heat of the day. 

 A couple days later we did another hike in that area and came across a couple more momma goats, this time each with 2 kids.

The youngsters demonstrated the famous agility

Apparently the corollary to Pronghorn antelopes actually being closer related to goats, Mountain Goats are technically antelopes though I don't think I read any of the signs in the visitor centers to remember the horn/hoof differences that makes this so.

Pronghorns on the Prairie

Custer State Park, in addition to its well-known herd of buffalo, has a solid population of pronghorns.  We saw a number of males near the road.

I think the flowers are blue vervain and sneezeweed (maybe gray coneflower?)

A close look at this (somewhat small) buck (?) ram (?).  Not sure on the correct term...

While Pronghorns are often referred to as antelope, my understanding is that they're actually a kind of goat, if you can believe that.

Apparently an ice age or two ago there was some kind of cheetah that lived on the American plains.  In response, pronghorns evolved into the fastest North American mammal (and I think the 2nd fastest in the world).  Of course surviving whatever ice age wiped out the American cheetahs is probably an even bigger survival advantage.

I think this next one is the largest one we saw.

He was sooo close to posing by the flowers, but turned away from them (after the first one seemed to favor the vervain flowers as browse).