Mating rituals

All posts tagged Mating rituals

Monday ~ September 06, 2021

Posted by Dave Updegraff on September 6, 2021
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , , .

Happy Monday!

Sorry for the delay in posting more images.  I have had some things going on in my life that have taken me away from my photography for awhile.  Today I have several images of Bison.  This was our third day in the park and we wanted to go back to the place where the”Buffalo Roam.”  Sorry I couldn’t help myself.  🙂

Please click on the image to see a larger more detailed version of the image.  Love the look on his face.  It was close to the mating season when we were there and this is one of the things male Bison do to attract a mate.


This was after his dust roll and he came down to where his lady friend was standing.  You can still see a little bit of the dust  around him.  You can see he is announcing his presence with his low bellow.  When they do that I must admit it sounds ominous and foreboding.


I don’t know what she is thinking but she doesn’t look all the interested in him.  He stood beside her for several minutes.  Just swishing flies with his tail and every once in a while he would bellow again.


We never saw that many calves but when we did they were very close to their mother.  If you look closely at his coat you can see that he has had a few scrapes already in his young life.

This is what happens when a Bison decides to cross the road.  Major traffic jam. We saw an entire heard cross the road on our fist day in the park and we were far enough back with our van that I couldn’t get a shot of it.  The park rangers were there to make sure they all got across the road.  An average bull weighs 850 pounds and can run at about 35 mph so they are a presence to be reckoned with.


And now for our biggest adventure.  We had stopped at a picnic area to have some lunch.  There were lots of people there and we thought we were lucky to find an empty table.  There was a group of eight to our left and a group of 4 to our right.  Jeanne happened to mention that all the trees in the area had the bark rubbed off.

Not long after she said that we heard a low bellow and there he was.  He was coming straight to our area.  All of us in unison ran to our cars until he passed.  He came up to our car and I was wondering how I was going to explain this big dent in the car.  But he didn’t bother us and he casually walked on down to the stream for a drink and most of us went back to our lunch.

Enjoy your day and be careful.

Saturday ~ August 07, 2021

Posted by Dave Updegraff on August 7, 2021
Posted in: Daily Posts. Tagged: , , , , .

Happy Saturday!

Today’s post is all about wildlife in the park.  (you know the drill, click on the image to make it larger and more detailed.)  As our guide was taking us along the road to one of the geysers, she pulled over quickly and stopped amid a lot of other vehicles.  A very large bull elk was resting in the shade of some trees.  He was huge.  I couldn’t get into the position I wanted to get a full image of him because of the terrain and the fact that our guide cautioned us that if you get too close to them they could charge.

This will give you some idea of the size of this male.  He was actually trying to sleep in the shade.  I really wanted to get closer but was told again not to put stress on the animal for its safety and my own.  I have done a fair amount of wildlife photography and it is never my intent to stress out the wildlife.  I had my 600 mm lens on the Nikon D500 body (which is a cropped sensor camera) and that me reach a focal length of 900 mm.

It wasn’t long after we left the bull elk that we came across a herd of bison.  Now in my tiny little mind the buffalo and bison were the same thing but our knowledgeable guide explained the difference.  She said there are no buffalo in the park only bison.  Their shaggy winter coat, their large heads, and hump on their back is much different than the buffalo.

The male bison kicks up some dirt in large quantities by pawing the ground and then lays his 800+ pound body in the dust and rolls in it. You could see these little dust storms all around the herd.  While it is not quite mating season yet many of the bulls are trying to attract a mate and this is how they go about it.  It is actually quite entertaining to watch the massive creatures rolling around in the dust.

This image is of the same bull after he got up from his dust-storm (on the left) to impress the lady on the right.  He was shepherding her away from the rest of the herd and had things on his mind. All the time he was following her he was emitting a loud bellow.  He kept his bellowing up all the way up the hill nudging her along the route he wanted her to take.

We didn’t see many of these calves.  They are a reddish brown and do not wander too far from their mother.  We only saw two in this particular herd.

Meanwhile this guy continued trying to move this female up the hill and away from the rest of the herd.  His bellowing was non stop.  I don’t know what he was saying but he had something on his mind worth saying a lot. 🙂

The bison eat around sage brush, which is actually poison to them.  This guy has a big chunk of sage brush stuck to his horn and you can see some of the remains of his winter coat.

We spent a fair amount of time with this herd and I shot lots of images but many of them looked alike.  So I would photograph a while and then just watch the interaction of the bison with each other.  It was very enjoyable.

Thank you for stopping by.  I hope you are enjoying Yellowstone through my lens.  Tomorrow we head out to the Grand Tetons, some of the most majestic mountains in America.

Enjoy your day and be careful.