Winter Yellowstone Wildlife

The 2018 Winter in Yellowstone photo tours have just wrapped and it was a wonderful season with many wildlife photography opportunities. I held 6 tours in all which afforded me the chance to experience the Park and the changes over a two month period. It’s always interesting to see how one year you may see many fox, bobcats, elk, etc. and the next year none to be seen. While we didn’t see the bobcats this year there were several opportunities to photograph wolves, primarily the very large Wapiti Lake Pack.

Along with the wolves everyone had a chance to see and photograph one of my favorite canines in the Park the coyote, including the “fishing coyote” along the Madison River. This unusual behavior has recently been witnessed in Yellowstone and the BBC had a film crew there trying to capture footage of the activity. I love the light hitting the coyote in the lead photograph as it stayed perfectly still for at least 15 minutes just soaking up the last rays of sunlight for the day.

It started out being a rather mild winter and by the end of the second January tour I was concerned about how much snow we’d have late in February for my last two excursions. The snow cycle seemed to have been flipped this year as the snow piled up, and is probably still doing so at the rate it was coming down. The temperatures never got down to what is more typical and I think the coldest morning was a -15. 

This page shows only a small selection of photos I managed to capture with more to come as I have the chance to do more editing. Moya, my much neglected pup, is demanding I make up for all the time away so it may be a while. Priorities! If you’re interested in joining one of these semi-private tours for 2019 more information may be found at this link.