He who marvels at the beauty of the world in summer will find equal cause for wonder and admiration in winter…. In winter the stars seem to have rekindled their fires, the moon achieves a fuller triumph, and the heavens wear a look of a more exalted simplicity.

~John Burroughs

After traveling East for Thanksgiving, we decided to stay in Montana for perhaps our first white Christmas in many years. Unfortunately, the crazy weather has other things in mind and on Christmas Eve we may have set a new record high temperature of 51 degrees F. Plus, instead of snow, we recorded 0.6 inches of rain into Christmas morning. We do see snow on the mountains from our deck but none on the ground here. We traveled into the park on Christmas afternoon in hopes of finding snow. Well, there is some snow on the ground in the northeast section of the park, but much of what we saw was mud and water standing where I have never seen water before. Even the aptly named Phantom Lake had standing water (not sure I have ever seen that in my 40+ years of visiting). After walking just a few short steps in Lamar Valley in hopes of seeing wolves at a carcass, we returned to the car with muddy boots and only a few ravens out in the direction of the elk carcass. And now the day after, more rain. But the forecast is calling for snow tomorrow and then cold temperatures with nighttime lows below 10 degrees next week, then more snow. So, perhaps we will see a winter landscape soon.

Meanwhile, here are a couple of images from our Christmas day trip with the unusual sighting of 7 coyotes hanging together in Lamar. One must not have belonged as it was soon ostracized by the others who calmly headed towards us and crossed the road before disappearing into the sage. Can’t recall ever seeing that many seemingly adult coyotes together at one time so we are guessing it was a family from last summer still hanging out.

There was yet another coyote further down the valley and then we saw one more on our drive home making for a 9 coyote day. Lots of bison, a large bull moose, some eagles (golden and bald) and herds of elk and pronghorn near Gardiner rounded out our wildlife sightings for the afternoon.

Today, we went up to the base of the cliff behind the house to change the card in our trail camera. I thought the batteries would be dead after all the wind we have had in recent days (the blowing vegetation tends to trigger the camera) but was pleasantly surprised to find otherwise. Below are the highlights from the last two weeks. Be forewarned that he first clip is a tough one to see.

–This coyote appears to have a broken leg or at least a severely injured one. Three days after this video was taken, it came through again, this time with a little more energy in its step.

–About 30 minutes after the limping coyote came through on its first visit, this chunky coyote walked by the camera. Looks like it is well fed.

Back in the summer, this camera regularly caught two coyotes on this trail. Then they disappeared and have not been seen (or heard) for a few months. Wondering if these are the same two.

Lastly, a beautiful animal that now has been recorded twice on this camera, the last time back in October. Looking back at that footage, it looks like this is a different individual as it is much more spotted than the previous one and appears smaller. Always great to see these wild beauties. Ironically, this one came through on the same night as the two coyotes and was ahead of the limping coyote by about two hours.

–A beautiful bobcat saunters past the camera just a couple of hours before the coyotes walked through the same scene.

Looking forward to snow!