USA 2018 (13), Wolves?

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American magpie, Bald eagle, BBC, BBC Wildlife magazine, Bighorn sheep, Bison, Cooke City, coyote, Don Hartman, elk, Golden eagle, Great grey owl, Jackson Hole, Lamar River, mountain goat, Natural Habitat, Raven, red fox, Rick McIntyre, Silver Gate, tracking wolves, Yellowstone, Yellowstone National Park

USA 2018 (13), Wolves?  It was still dark – and minus 33ºC/minus 28ºF – when we set off at 7 a.m., to look seriously for wolves on this Tuesday morning, 20th February. After all, the name of the trip was ‘Yellowstone: Ultimate Wolf and Wildlife Safari’. We were essentially retracing the last part of our journey the day before, westwards from Cooke City, which is just outside the north-east corner of Yellowstone National Park, back along the Lamar valley, and then continuing parallel with the Yellowstone River westwards a little further. At our first stop, where we looked in vain for a wolf pack before the sun had even risen above the mountains, we saw water vapour rising from the creek, as if a hot sun were evaporating the water prior to a scorching hot day! But I was told it was case of thermal inversion. Our next stop, for ‘comfort’ purposes, was in yet another beautiful spot. Then we pulled up again, when we saw a group of photographer tourists parked and looking upwards – at four sleeping coyotes, of which here are two.

Female bighorn sheep. Unusually, the female of this species has horns, but this one is lacking one of them.

Female bighorn sheep encounters bison, with no untoward outcome

We arrived at the furthest point intended for the day, where there was a good chance, we were told, of seeing a given pack of wolves.  We met Lizzie, who spends much of her time tracking the animals. She passed round a collar which had been round a wolf’s neck, and that felt quite spooky to me. It was pretty heavy, and we were reminded that the wolf is a very large animal, though it’s difficult to realise when you see them from a distance – IF ever we should see them, from a distance or no. No luck this morning and we made our way back to Cooke City for lunch, quite slowly as we kept seeing interesting things and stopping.

The other two ‘sleeping’ coyotes

Icing sugar? Ice cream? Thick snow?

Bald eagle

Male bighorn sheep

Pawing the snow aside to reach the vegetation.  Despite appearances, it is the legs of the sheep which are vertical, not the camera crooked

Ravens eating carcase, antler and vertebrae visible

Coyote

There is a tiny cream-coloured smudge in this photo, three-quarters of the way from the left and about a third down, below and to the right of the second big tree in from the right.  It is at least two, perhaps three miles away, and is a mountain goat. Tim somehow spotted it for us.

Enlarging this photo further would just make the animal very blurry indeed.

Cooke City

The view from my room, not seen in the dark the night before or in the morning

Plans for the afternoon were to meet a wildlife cinematographer, and then to have an individual choice between: resting for a while, going snow-shoeing, or further wildlife searching. Most people seemed to be going to opt for the last, including me. But then all plans changed. Wolves had been seen, where we had been that morning. So we ‘rushed’ off there, as safely as we could, but even so it took about an hour. En route we saw…

Male Bighorn sheep, presumably the same we had seen before lunch

A red fox, the only one all week. (Just how do these animals survive?)

And more bison. So difficult not to take photos of them.

Arrived at the same spot as the morning, we met Rick McIntyre, who gave us a fascinating talk on the ecology of the animal. [PS, three weeks later. Rick is featured in a fascinating article on one of the Yellowstone wolves in the March  edition of ‘BBC Wildlife Magazine’.] But the wolves had gone. ‘Hang on, there they are!’ the cry rang out from one of the leaders (now three as Tim from Nat Hab had joined us.).  A very, very long way away.  I was not the only one not to see them, whether through binoculars, cameras, or telescopes.  Try, try and try, no, we just couldn’t.  Moreover, it was said they were disturbing elk and bison, which would have been even more fascinating to see.  But no, not many of us saw them. Not us amateurs anyway.  I took several photos of where we were meant to be looking, hoping to blow them up and at least see them on my screen.

Not here

 

But here, on maximum zoom

No such luck. ‘They’ve gone now’. We left the scene, and made our way back towards Cooke City.

Golden eagle and American magpie on carcase

Fleeting glimpse of an elk which had not made its way to the refuge at Jackson Hole, 100 miles or so to the south

However, we stopped at Silver Gate, just a short distance from Cooke City (not a city but more a large village, by the way).  Our stop there was to meet the very patient Don Hartman.  But then wildlife photographers are used to being patient.

I was especially thrilled to meet him. In post (5) of these USA 2018 posts, I mentioned that there had been a second BBC series on Yellowstone just before I left for the trip. Don Hartman had taken its amazing footage on the Great Grey Owl family through the seasons. He show us some of this footage, some more which didn’t make the cut, and other work of his, then answered many questions. What a surprise and privilege to meet him, and here he is.

It was dark as we left for another good meal in Cooke City.  But a little warmer (!) as we bade each other goodnight, minus 25ºC/minus 13ºF.

[My apologies for the changes of type, which I have no idea how to correct. Retyping has made no difference. Any advice from fellow WordPress bloggers would be gratefully received.]

Avebury Manor

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Adam Williamson, Avebury Circle, Avebury Manor, BBC, National Trust, Richard Holford, Sir Alexander Keiller, Wiltshire

A few years ago, the BBC and the National Trust collaborated on a project to do up Avebury Manor, in Wiltshire, in an innovative way.  I avoid the word ‘restore’, as each room was done up, using modern copies and decoration, as a kind of stage set, to illustrate how the room might have looked at a certain period of the Manor’s history.  Right now, staff and volunteers have further embellished each room to show how it might have looked at Christmas.  I visited last week with a friend. Here are some photos I took, reflecting not historical order, but our tour, which started with how a Tudor dining room might have looked at Christmas in the mid 16th century. Next was a dining room as it might have been in 1798, when the then owner, Sir  Adam Williamson, former Governor of Jamaica had a fatal fall in that very room, possibly as the result of a stroke. We visited the post World War I billiard room, but I was unable to get a decent picture, other than this one, for too much brilliant sunlight and the presence of too many visitors.

The 1912 kitchen occasionally reminded us of items we had known in our own 20th-century childhoods.

We were pleased to be offered in the room next door, which had been the servants’ hall, minced pies and mulled apple juice.

It was the millionaire archeologist Sir Alexander Keiller, of the marmalade family, who bought Avebury Manor in the 20th century, in order to work on excavating and re-erecting the standing stones.  (His widow gifted the estate to the National Trust in 1966.) Here is his parlour as it may have looked in the 1930s.

Next we saw a late Tudor bedroom, sadly with a sumptuous bedcover removed and a rather boring ‘Christmassy’ one in its place.  Still, it was good to see the handmade felt decorations on the Christmas tree, though on reflection wasn’t it the Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert who introduced that traditional Christmas symbol to the country? Queen Anne may or may not have dined at Avebury Manor, and may or may not have slept there in 1702.  But Richard Holford, the owner at the time, may well have  prepared for the eventuality, and here is a stage set version (as the guide insisted) of how it might have been done.No explanation was given of these festive delights: Most of the garden was closed, but we were able to see a little of it and look back at the house,

before walking alongside the wall past the church to the outbuildings, including the cafeteria where we lunched, after visiting the archeological museum.  Then, as it was a chilly day, whether or not the sun was out, we limited our visit to the Avebury Stone Circle to a few minutes, before making our way home.

 

Dumfriesshire, part 2

Tags

BBC, chaffinch, Dumfries, granite, Hole i' the Wa', John Balliol, Lockerbie, Mabie House Hotel, New Abbey, Nith, rabbit, red sandstone, Robert Burns, St George's Cathedral, Sweetheart Abbey

On Thursday, 23rd July, I was again to be with two people with whom I had been in contact for a while, but had never met.  My late mother’s second cousin and I were have lunch together at New Abbey. On the way, I stopped at Dumfries to explore a little. (Note the sun, it won’t stay for long and it was chilly.)

This is still the top of a Burton shop.

The tiny entrance to this Hole i’ the Wa’ looked so fascinating that I thought I might take a coffee there on my way back down the main street.

Greyfriars Kirk and Robbie Burns

I know it doesn’t do the building any good, but I do like seeing vegetation growing where it’s not meant to.

My eye was caught by these – and other elsewhere in the window – gentlemen!

I soon found myself in an elegant, no doubt former residential, part of Dumfries, now largely occupied by the professions.

Beyond the restaurant, these buildings are the courts and the procurator fiscal’s office.

When I went back to the Hole i’ the Wa’, I was greeted by this along the alleyway:

The inside of the inn was as large as the entrance was small, with a variety of bars and rooms. I was able to tuck myself in a corner with my coffee and observe.

Well refreshed, when going back down the high street intending to return direct to the car park, I was tempted right, sideways and downhill, as it looked to me as if there might be a riverside at the end of that road.  There was indeed, quite a picturesque one with some nice bridges, of which here is one, over the River Nith.

It was raining by the time I got back to the car park.

R. and I had arranged to meet and lunch at the (New) Abbey Cottage Tearoom, next to Sweetheart Abbey, and we were able to dodge the showers just long enough to have a quick look round before eating.  This once Cistercian Abbey was founded by Lady Dervorgilla of Galloway, wife of Lord John Balliol, in 1275.

In the Tearoom, the waitress had some difficulty in getting our order out of us, we were talking so much about who was related to whom, how well had each of us known so-and-so, and general getting-to-know-you conversation, but eventually she got a look in, and we ate, rather slowly as we were talking so much.

We moved on to R. and his wife’s home, deep in the hills, built not in the dark red sandstone of Dumfries and New Abbey, but in the pretty granite of the country we were now in.

I think I could live with such a view

The talking continued, and continued, more on family history, (R. has done a lot of genealogical work on my maternal grandmother’s side), then on R.’s former work as a sound engineer for the BBC, and then on music.  R. is a very competent pianist, and his father was organist at St George’s Cathedral, Southwark (I hadn’t realised there were two cathedrals in Southwark before) and used to compose.  He showed me some songs his father had written, in a beautiful manuscript.  I really wanted to try some of them, but didn’t dare suggest it, limiting myself to just reading a few bars of some of them in my head.  How I wish I’d said something, because, as I learned later, too late, that was just what R. wanted as well.  And I’m not usually one to hold back…

Later in the afternoon, the three of us standing in the kitchen, I saw a red squirrel out in the garden!  Beautiful.  I took my camera, and was planning to sit quietly out there to see what I could snap.  I was outside for just a few minutes, and got this,

then the rain started again.  From inside, I managed to take nothing of real wildlife interest, but this at least shows some of the abundant granite boulders lying naturally in the garden.

As the evening before, the encounter ended with a pleasant meal out at the Mabie House Hotel, conveniently placed for my drive back to Lockerbie. As we left, it was so warm that we nearly drove away without our jackets.

I had just one day of my holiday left, and absolutely nothing planned for it.