Skip the Bear Jams this Summer

Question.

“As much as I would love to travel to Yellowstone in the winter, it’s just not practical and it’s too cold. So, like most people, I visit the park in the summer. But the problem that I find is the number of people. If I spot a bear to photograph, suddenly there’s a two-hour traffic jam with hundreds of photographers all lining the side of the road to create the same photograph, for instance. My question for you is that since you spent many years living in the area, what other wildlife and what other places can I go to escape the crowds and actually create unique photographs?” — Jessica Hartwell. Portland, Oregon

This is a great question and one I’ve heard more times than I can count. Summer in Yellowstone is the season of elbow-to-elbow “wilderness,” complete with parking lot stand-offs, 400mm lens duels, and the slow-motion ballet of brake lights stretching all the way from Hayden Valley to Bozeman, Montana.

I’m going to let you in on a secret. This may very well be the best kept secret in wildlife photography across North America. One of those, if I tell you, I will have to kill you sort of secrets. This knowledge has the potential to radically change your photography around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystems forever. If you talk about it, you will get “looks.” If you act upon it, you will get laughs – especially from tourists. When local photographers dare whisper mention of it to outsiders, the result is a predictable glazed over stare in the eyes of visiting photographers.

Are you sitting down?

In the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, there exists some 450 incredible species that are rarely noticed, let alone photographed. They come in a rainbow of colors. They are charismatic. They have feathers. We call them birds.

Yellowstone has never been just about bears and bison, unless you’re only looking at photos on Facebook. The same ecological forces that make this one of the greatest strongholds of megafauna in the lower 48 also make it one of the richest avian ecosystems in North America. I would even go so far as to claim that the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is one of the most productive bird photography hotspots in the lower 48 states.

I realize that for some of you reading this, I may have just rolled a mental hand grenade across the floor in your direction. Relax. The spinning sensation will pass. Find a brown paper bag if you begin to hyperventilate.

Yellowstone National Park, and those octopus-like arms that unfurl across the map in all directions to encompass what we call the GYE is not exactly known for its avifauna. We have grizzly bears. We have grey wolves. This is where bison live, pronghorn, bighorns, elk, and moose. This is the epicenter of big mammal photography in the Western Hemisphere. Birds you say?

Yet, the bird photography in the GYE can be extraordinary. Given the extreme geographical diversity that this ecosystem encompasses, from vast expanses of sagebrush desert to high mountain glaciers, the number of species of birds that either call this place home or simply exploit it as a stopover along their migrations to far flung lands elsewhere, offers up the opportunistic wildlife photographer a world of subjects that few lenses are aimed at. And as a working wildlife photographer, I will argue that if you are ignoring these species here, then you are missing out on a large part of what Yellowstone has to offer.

In all honesty, the bird photography here is a year-round event. But the good stuff comes as spring and summer unfold across the ecosystem. These are relative terms though. Calendar dates can be largely ignored. In the GYE, the spring equinox brings about sage grouse strutting their stuff defiantly in the face of extinction from oil and gas operations down in the lower elevations, while at the same time, subalpine meadows where dusky grouse eke out a living are still locked in the deep freeze of winter. This is why words like spring and summer don’t hold the same meaning in this ecosystem.


Great Horned Owlets

Great horned owls are not known to be a “cavity nesting” species. They really aren’t all that picky about where they nest so long as it provides them with cover for their offspring and easy access to food sources. But when it comes to cottonwood lined river bottoms around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, every great horned owl nest I have photographed has been in cavities like this.

The easiest way to find these nesting sites is to listen for the tell-tale begging calls of the chicks. These birds are typically crepuscular in nature, meaning they are active early and late in the day. But when the chicks are growing fast, they will climb up onto the lip of these old cavities and begin making begging calls to try and wake the adults up and bring them food anytime of the day.


Come June and July, the place to be if you want to find and photograph birds here are the aspen groves and wetlands. But these two vastly different types of habitats are shockingly good for different reasons.

When it comes to aspen trees, it’s all about the soft wood. Aspens are the trees of choice for cavity excavating woodpeckers everywhere this species grows. And the importance of this tree species for these birds seems to reach a fever pitch here in the Northern Rockies.

Woodpeckers, or what our Spanish speaking friends to the south call carpenteros, are ecological engineers. These are the architects of the bird world, building house and home for scores of other species who are unable to excavate cavities themselves. Since aspen trees grow in distinct groves across the Northern Rockies, concentrating woodpecker activity to these areas, you can find birds and small arboreal mammals in this areas that border on the absurd at times. I have found single trees with eight active nesting cavities, surrounded by aspens filled with other nests.

There is a real benefit for primary and secondary cavity nesting birds to be clustered up like this in the form of the old adage of there being safety in numbers. With a hundred nests in a small grove of aspens, you may have two – three hundred birds using this habitat. That’s a lot of eyes looking out for nest raiding predators like the American marten and short-tailed weasel.

If you find a nursery grove of these aspens, you can spend days filling memory cards in an area the size of a single acre. In a single grove, it’s not uncommon to find nearly eye-level opportunities with red-shafted northern flickers, mountain bluebirds, violet-green swallows, red-naped sapsuckers, mountain chickadees, and red-breasted nuthatches to name just a few. And all of these may be in the exact same tree.

The best places for this are down in Grand Teton National Park – Yellowstone’s southern neighbor. The overpopulated herds of elk long ago destroyed the great stands of aspen trees in Yellowstone in the absence of wolves and the ecology of fear. In the Tetons, however, you can still find towering old growth stands of these trees. And it’s these old stands that are always the most productive.


Red-Naped Sapsucker on Aspen Tree

Of all the many species of woodpeckers in the forest, I think it’s the red-naped sapsuckers that fascinate me the most. These birds are known as sapsuckers due to the habit of drilling sap wells in trees. If you have ever gone for a hike in the woods and noticed a tree with hundreds or even thousands of small holes in neat rows around the tree, this was the handy work of a sapsucker.

The sap wells play double duty for these woodpeckers diets. Not only do they consume the sugary tree sap that oozes out, but they also pick off and eat all of the insects that are also attracted to the sugary water.

Other birds have picked up on the fact that sapsuckers equate to a smorgasbord of different food sources. And hummingbirds such as the ruby-throated hummingbird are well known for following sapsuckers through the forest as they try to find these sugary bounties.

Red-naped sapsuckers are one of many different species of cavity nesters you can easily find and photograph in the old growth aspen stands around the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem.


Wetlands overflow with bird life in this region for a variety of reasons. Similar to the soft and somewhat pliable nature of aspen trees, which concentrates woodpecker activity, wetlands tend to concentrate just about everything else in this ecosystem.

Here’s a potentially new term that you should become acquainted with in your quest for ecological literacy: riparian zone.

A riparian zone is a type of ecotone (transition zone) where terrestrial habitat meets water. Across places like Wyoming, riparian zones make up a little less than 1% of the available habitat, while harboring some 80% of all wildlife in the region.

Yes. You read this right. A single type of habitat that makes up less than 1% of the geography, plays house and home to 80% of all the regions wildlife. In other words: find the riparian zone and you will find the wildlife – both avian and mammalian. This couldn’t be simpler.

If you want sandhill cranes with colts, find the wetlands with hardstem bulrush marsh. If you take a stroll through the cottonwoods along a river bottom, your chance at finding great horned owl nests will increase 100-fold (as well as moose). Great grey owls will be extremely active this time of year as they busy themselves feeding young throughout much of the day. And if you have read past articles in PhotoWILD Magazine, then you may already know that these birds have a very distinct correlation with boreal wetlands.

And those are just the charismatic avifauna. Both red-winged and yellow-headed blackbirds nest in this region. As do cinnamon teal, harlequin ducks, Rocky Mountain trumpeter swans, green winged teal, and white pelicans. Don’t get me started and on species ducks that actually nest in woodpecker cavities like buffleheads, common goldeneye, barrows goldeneye, and hooded mergansers which can all be found here – meaning if you find an old nursery grove of aspens near wetlands or a riparian zone, you have hit the jackpot.

As you can see, the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem is more than antlers and teeth. Though the big charismatic mammals of the park tend to be the object of every wildlife photographer’s desire, the avian members of this community provide extraordinary opportunities as well. It is easy to develop tunnel vision in a landscape like this, becoming fixated on finding and photographing grizzlies for instance. But the intrigue of Yellowstone is that it is so much more than that. This is one of the largest intact ecosystems in the whole of the Northern Hemisphere. The diversity of wildlife is staggering, and the opportunities for the observant photographer are endless.

Actions

If you’re photographing Yellowstone in the summer, skip the crowds and look to the skies, or really the wetlands and the aspens groves. Focus on birds. Seek out old growth aspen groves for cavity nesters, wetlands for cranes waterfowl, and adjacent boreal forests for owls. Get out of your vehicle, hike away from the road, and explore edge habitats where biodiversity thrives. You’ll avoid the traffic jams, photograph unique species, come away with memory cards filled with images, and likely have some of the most memorable experiences you have ever had in the area as you learn to see and explore beyond the roadside attractions and bear jams.



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