Late summer in Yellowstone tends to be the slowest time for wildlife sightings.  Many animals escape the heat by moving to higher elevations, away from the roads.  In terms of humans, however, July and August are the park’s busiest months.  Less wildlife + hordes of visitors = not the best Yellowstone experience.

This summer was no exception.  Often I returned from the park without taking a single photo.  And even early in the morning the congestion on the roads could be maddening.

Luckily, one of the advantages of living in a place like Silver Gate is that my favorite animals occasionally make house calls.  One morning in late July our friend and neighbor Jill broke some big news:  a weasel family had, at least temporarily, taken up residence underneath a nearby building, and the building’s occupants had very graciously given us permission to Weasel Watch on the property.  I didn’t have to wait long for my first encounter.

 

 

Over the course of the next month the weasels came and went, usually spending a couple days under the building and then vanishing for a week or two.  One day when the family was particularly active I counted at least six of them – a mother with five kids, we guessed – although I was never able to get photos of more than one at a time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We identified the family as long-tailed weasels, with different coloring (yellower belly fur) and longer tails than the short-tailed weasel that visited our yard last year.  What a thrill to be able to spend so much time with them.  We’re all crossing our fingers that they’ll decide to stay here over the winter.

 

 

While the weasel family was my late-summer wildlife highlight, I did manage to stumble across some other animals.  I continued my habit of doing an early morning hike each day, often up to Trout Lake, where I sometimes found a black bear that apparently kept a routine similar to mine.  And one morning at Round Prairie I spotted a grizzly bear mom with two cubs.

 

 

 

For a long time I’d been thinking about upgrading to a new camera – the mirrorless Sony A1 – and in August I finally pulled the trigger.  I’ll need some time to get comfortable with the new setup, but very quickly I felt good about my decision when I was able to get a sharp photo of a fox in low light that would have been much more challenging with my old camera.

 

 

Later in August there was some excitement in Lamar Valley when a bison carcass attracted a mix of wolves and bears.  The carcass was close enough to the road to see well with binoculars, and apparently at one point there were as many as six grizzlies feeding on it.  When I arrived there was a lone grizzly protecting the carcass from two wolves.  Soon a coyote approached as well, giving me a chance to catch a grizzly, wolf, and coyote in a single shot for the first time.

 

 

 

 

I experienced another first not long after that when a raccoon crossed the road in front of me at Confluence and then swam across the Lamar River.  Oddly enough, raccoon sightings are rare in this area and I’d never seen one in Yellowstone before.

 

 

 

 

 

The weather in Silver Gate has already started to turn, and I’m hopeful that cooler temperatures will soon bring more animals back down to the valleys.  At the end of August I found three moose at lower Barronette – a bull, a cow, and a yearling calf – which felt like a good omen.  I’ll definitely miss warm summer days, but I’m ready to trade them for fewer people, fewer bugs, and more wildlife.