When we arrived it was still early in the morning.
Gorgeous
The valley is one of the best places in Yellowstone to see bison, elk and the occasional grizzly bear. In addition there is an abundance waterfowl, including ducks, Canadian geese and pelicans. I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me but it's true. There are pelicans in Yellowstone. Who knew? They're American White Pelicans. The only pelicans I've ever seen were in Florida or along the Gulf Coast but apparently American White Pelicans do their summer breeding on lakes throughout the northern Great Plains and mountains in the West.
Scattered along the valley too were my favorite. Buffalo, American Bison, or in the tongue of the Sioux, Tatonka. Once numbering from 60-100 million the Buffalo was almost hunted to extinction by the 1880's. At that time there were only a few hundred left. Today it's estimated there are about 350,000 Buffalo in North America.
The only continuously wild buffalo herd in the United States resides within Yellowstone National Park. This herd, now numbering about 4,000, is descended from a population of 23 mountain bison that survived the mass slaughter of the 1800s by hiding out in the Pelican Valley of Yellowstone Park.
These magnificent creatures are the largest mammals in Yellowstone National Park. Being strictly vegetarian they graze the grasslands and sedges in the meadows, foothills and high-elevation forested plateaus of Yellowstone. Males can weigh upwards of 1,800 pounds and females about 1,000 pounds. Both stand approximately six feet tall at the shoulder. They are literally as big as a small vehicle and can move with surprising speed. They can run as fast as 35 miles per hour and have the unexpected agility to leap over a standard barbed-wire fence.
Buffalo appear docile but between 1978 and 1992, nearly five times as many people in Yellowstone National Park were killed or injured by bison as by bears (12 by bears, 56 by bison). We could see the aggression. Starting the end of July and into August the Yellowstone buffalo converge on Hayden Valley for their annual rutting (mating) season. Competition between bulls for female cows gets intense. There's a lot of jockeying, posturing and grunting. Two bulls locked horns and went at each other right in front of us. They lowered their heads into each other maneuvering for position, kicking up dust and thundering downhill with the crack and crunching of tree limbs telegraphing the fight back up to us. When one of the buffaloes came back up the hill he was moving pretty fast...right at us. We ran for the car and jumped up on the roof!
Dylan, on the roof of the Jeep, a little wary of the buffalo.
Here's another video of buffalo swimming the Yellowstone River. A couple get swept away by the current!
We passed through the Hayden Valley multiple times in our visit to Yellowstone and we were always in awe of the buffalo.
Buffalo are one of the touchstones of ancient America. They are a symbol of the American West. They used to roam the great plains in unimaginable numbers. The plains and western mountains were America's Serengeti. It'd be nice to see that again. The plains States are losing population now and there is a movement afoot to let the land go back to natural prairie and create what would be called the Buffalo Commons where the natural flora and fauna could repopulate. I think that would be magical....and probably a HUGE tourist attraction.
It would have been one of the great tragedies of all time to lose one of North America's greatest animals. To see them in the wild like this in such a grandiose landscape is a great privilege and a little heaven on earth.
Next, another of the great valleys in Yellowstone. The magnificent Lamar Valley.
1 comment:
Awesome, awesome, awesome! Love your writing. I can't believe the animals you saw--and so close! Donna
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