Celebrating Mother's Day with the Bison Moms & Calves

If you haven't checked out the photos posted by participants in Saturday, May 2nd's Meetup, you should give them a perusal. These are not your typical, everyday, garden variety Yellowstone images.

Sunday's weather forecast for the north end of the park looks significantly better than Saturday's, and the fact that it is Mother's Day dovetails quite nicely with the itinerary I had in mind for this weekend's Meetup. This Mother's Day activities revolve more around observing and photographing the annual arrival of those playful/entertaining calves known to many as "Little Red Dogs".

We will kick off the day's festivities with a short, easy hike from a roadside pullout in Little America to the Peregrine Hills. In recent years, we have discovered these knolls, one in particular, to be ideal vantage points from which to observe, photograph, even video the bison moms with their newborn calves. Many of you have been out there with us at one time or another in the past 4 or 5 years, so you know what to expect. The proximal presence of a large cow/calf bison herd is not guaranteed, but over time we have learned that this is one of the most productive places for seeing the moms and their calves in May. The herds tend to situate themselves in between the easternmost of the Peregrine Hills and a fair-sized pond. The herds don't stay in one place the entire day, so we sometimes have to be flexible and mobile. The key thing is that we have to be respectful of the need to maintain reasonable and safe separation between the bison and the humans. That is where the hills come in handy. The mothers tend to avoid the steeper terrain while their progeny are very young and still developing their leg strength outside the womb.

On Saturday, up high on the south side of Mt. Everts above the Rim Trail, we observed several small herds of bison cows with newborn calves. Those calves were laying down any time the herd slowed to anything resembling a pause or a STOP. Those same calves will likely be starting to exhibit that characteristic youthful play we have come to expect from bison calves as soon as they gain the ability to prance around like jumping jacks teasing each other and playing their bovine version of Hide and Seek.

This initial hike of the day will be an out and back 1-2 miles round trip in open country, subject to unplanned detours if bison herd movements dictate such.

The afternoon has not been locked in as of yet. The plan at present is to play it a bit loose, and if the group has a decided preference for a particular activity and geography along the Northern Range, we will act on it. I have a small library of ideas for other potential short hikes that might be enjoyable, and might include critter photo opps. I will come equipped with 4 different spotting scopes and tripods to insure our ability to do some top notch viewing from the roadside if we happen on "charismatic mega-fauna", like bears, moose, wolves, etc. This is one of the most productive times of the year for wildlife viewing, so we will take advantage of it.

The current NOAA weather forecast for Mammoth on Sunday reads "A slight chance of showers and thunderstorms. Mostly sunny, with a high near 66." Monday's simply states "Sunny, with a high near 73." Maybe whatever high or low pressure system is predicted to be responsible for that improvement over the weekend will speed up its arrival.

If the weather continues to warm up and it produces ideal hiking conditions, we are likely to move south into the interior fairly soon to take advantage of it. You regulars have a fairly good idea what that likely means. There will be the inevitable wander out into western Hayden Valley and maybe the exploration of P.W. Norris' road that is rumored to have hugged those cliffs between Gibbon Falls and the Tuff Cliffs. There are plenty of other areas demanding our attention in the interior. Now is the time to get some early season off-trail wandering in before we start the really serious stuff.

See you Sunday!

Ballpark