Hayden Valley

This last week has been amazing bear sightings, especially out the east entrance.

And then in Hayden Valley, just had some friends get back from there yesterday.

And there was a grizzly on an elk carcass.

And then wolves came in Hayden Valley.

And so definitely check that out if you're there for the next couple of days.

That carcass will be picked pretty clean probably by Saturday, but you never know.

And Beaver Ponds Trail can be a favorite.

For driving around, I would go to Hayden Valley.

But as I would say, I'm always looking for birds.

That's how I get out of being the driver a lot.

But that's why just releasing for a, they'll be released in September.

It's usually late August, September every year.

And they're released in Hayden Valley.

on the Yellowstone River.

This year, there's a couple trumpeter swans in the pond right now when I was there this weekend, but I didn't see any cygnets, so they did not breed successfully.

I was also in Hayden Valley, saw some swans down there, but there were no new swans that appear to have been born.

There might be elsewhere, but those are the spots where I usually see them and didn't see them this year.

I wanted to talk about the swans because It's easy to think of the bigger animals in the park.

We don't know where they are, so I would go between Mammoth and Tower and go to that area known as the Blacktail area.

Then I would also look at Hell Roaring, and then I'd go out to Lamar and Little America.

Hayden Valley could also be pretty good as well.

That's where I would go, wake up early or go in the evening.

... grizzly and, and black-backed woodpecker.

Yeah, yeah, if you're going to Madison, maybe g- get down to Hayden Valley.

Yeah.

Might catch the, um, the Wapiti Lake pack.

It doesn't hurt anything.

When I saw my great gray owls last year, the only reason I saw them was because I decided to stop and enjoy a coyote on a hunt in Hayden Valley that nobody else cared about.

I stopped.

I was taking pictures and somebody said, oh, what do you see? And I was like, you know, there's a coyote hunting.

So if you're a bison trying to survive the winter, you prefer to be in a place where the snow is thinner, where it's not persistent, maybe a thermal area.

where, like the Hayden Valley perhaps, or lower elevations where there's less snow.

But they can push the snow away if they have to.

For some bison, it's like, okay, do you want to stay in place and push the snow around, or do you want to look and spend energy to move to a new place to find forage maybe lower down in the valley?