Wildflowers, water shrew tracks, bugs infesting plants and more…

The famous grizzly, 399.

The amazing Grand Prismatic spring in Yellowstone National Park.

Water shrew tracks. Looks closely for five toes on all feet (rodents only have 4 toes on the front ((shrews are insectivores, not rodents))).

More tracks of the water shrew. Like a regular shrew but larger.

Bearberry honeysuckle.

This is a cherry leaf infected by a “finger gall” mite. Eriophyes cerasicrumena does this to black cherrys… not sure if it also does this to our local choke cherry.

Bison in front of the Tetons.

This is a sagebrush infected by the midge Asphondylia auripila.

Another picture of the sagebrush infected by Asphondylia auripila. They create these fuzzy strange growths. They turn brown like this after they are dead… when they are young they are a green fuzzy growth.

Beaver chew on a cottonwood branch that was about eye level. Must have been a deep snow drift here when the beaver was feeding.

A hiding yellow-bellied sapsucker. This bird drills shallow, uniform “sap-wells” in trees which hardens and ferments, attracting insects to feed on the fermented sap. The bird returns to eat those drunk insects.

Warbling Vireo in her nest.

Delphinium glaucum. Tea and alcohol extracts from the seeds have been used for many years to kill lice and cure scabies.

Beautiful view of Death Canyon and Phelps lake.

Giant trumpeter swan tracks. This is North America’s largest waterfowl weighing 20 pounds and they can eat their entire body weight in a day.

There are badger, wolf, bison and grizzly tracks in this photo. I’m sure there’s more in here too.

All that’s left of a 4 week old fawn killed by a mountain lion. Nothing for scale here but the hooves are about an inch long.

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More finds from the Grand Tetons

We’ve survived another couple weeks volunteering for the Teton Cougar Project.  I continue to be amazed at the endless views and abundant wildlife encounters.  Here are some of our latest discoveries.

Michelle spots a moose!

Here is a forest fire that we drove past. There have been a ton of little fires lately. None as big as the one in the Sierras right now but this area is definitely headed for a big one.

An assortment of scats all from M68 over 4 days feeding at a double kill site of a beaver and yearling mule deer. This was a big lesson for me to see how different the scats could look even though they are all from the same animal.

Here is some beaver fur that we found at the kill site. Since there is often hardly anything left from a cougar kill, it pushes us as naturalists to identify animals from their hair, teeth or just a couple bones.

Some type of small raptor track that I keep coming across. I thought they were cooper’s hawk tracks but it bothers me that I never see cooper’s hawks around here.

Giant wolf tracks in the mud. The wolf packs are doing very well in north western Wyoming, it seems. We come across their tracks all the time.

Fossilized Triceratops skull for sale in Jackson… crazy. I didn’t know you could buy these.

Natal den of F109. Natal meaning the place where her kittens were born. I wish I took a zoomed out picture to show how thick with downfall the entire hillside was.

Nice little cutthroat trout.

Osprey feeding on a fish. Wish I had a better camera with a far zooming lens.

Some nice long-tailed weasel tracks. Weasel tracks look to me like tiny dog tracks but when you look closely there are five toes on each foot.

Two mustelid (weasel family) scats on a rock. If I had to guess I would call the small one long-tailed weasel and the big one marten but hard to say for sure.

These giant crickets have been everywhere lately and I caught this one laying its eggs into the ground.

There is a fox somewhere in this picture, one of the black dots in the distance.

The Grand Tetons. They look much bigger in real life.

This is the unmistakeable foot print of a porcupine. No detail, toes or claws really, but nothing else makes this smooth oval shape full of basketball-like pebbles.

Beautiful red fox tracks in the mud. Small dog-like tracks but totally covered in fur and with tiny heel pads. People also look for the “cheveron” shape made by the heel pad on the front foot (the lower one).

Nice trail of a black bear after a rain.

Close up of the black bear tracks. These are both right feet. The one of top is the right hind. It looks just like the left track of a barefoot person.

Nice tracks of a jumping mouse and a frog.

Mystery tracks. I have no idea what these could be. I think they are some kind of reptile or amphibian but I haven’t found any that live in Wyoming that fit for these tracks. It walks like a salamander but has 5 toes on the front feet (salamanders have 4). Will ask around and see if anyone has ideas. *Update* These are water shrew tracks.  Like normal shrew tracks but much bigger.

Hornet nest dug into by a black bear.

View from our latest hike.

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