Omnibus Spring Blog Post

We have some catching up to do.  My apologies to the faithful blog reader for failing to post about the park as often as usual this spring. Prepare for an omnibus post.

We've been pretty busy and I haven't gotten into the park as much as usual.  There are other exciting things in nature happening:

So the pictures are a bit spooky because of the inordinate detail they show in a single plane (and thereby cutting off other features!), but it makes more sense when you actually watch the pictures being taken.  Even though it doesn't look like it in the pictures, that little creature has the correct number of limbs, digits, and organs. I told the ultrasound technician her job was a lot like wildlife photography in that she's constantly trying to keep a moving subject in frame and in focus. 

Everything has been great so far and we're looking forward to a different lifestyle coming this August.  No one has taken up my offer to nominate names, but I have one picked out (debate is still open).  The sex of the baby is known (or presumed to be known) and will be revealed upon direct request.

Due to the amount of learning and looking around we've* done, and a desire to share that knowledge, Amber has embarked upon a new blog called Eco-Kid which aims to share information and resources on raising kids in ecologically responsible ways. Check it out!

*"We" might be giving myself too much credit.

So with the big news out of the way, I'll return to other wildlife news.

We took a day to drive up to Fort Union Trading Post NHS on our way to Wolf Point, MT.  The site, of course, is a reconstruction of an American Fur Company trading post at the confluence of the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers.  We mainly stopped to pick up the passport stamp, an obsession started last fall with our trip east.  We were invited to help stretch a fresh bison hide, but amid the foul odor of fat, the pooling blood on the hide, and the desire not to smell like that all day, we declined.  Good grief.  I like to see wild bison, and I like to see bison meat on my plate, but don't want to see anything in between.

Ranger Randy had me send this picture to my new boss at Fort Larned to prove he actually does work.  Gross.

We drove scenic Highway 16 from Beach, ND to Sidney, MT before cutting over to Fort Union.  In Sidney, we ate lunch at Taco John's, where at some point in the conversation with the lady running the store, Amber said "I love Montana!"  The Montanan replied, disbelievingly, "You love Montana?"  Heck yes we do.  It's a different world over there, including superior salad bars to North Dakota.  Seriously, what keeps North Dakotans from putting together a salad bar with something other than iceberg lettuce and ranch dressing?  Here's one of the reasons I love Montana:

The purpose of this whole day trip was to visit my friends Sherri and Gordon up in Wolf Point, MT.  We know each other from a random event - some may call it providence - in which my car broke down and rolled to a stop in front of their house back in 2008.  We enjoyed our visit chatting through the afternoon and showing a rough cut of our African travel video.  Amber got introduced to the livestock including peacocks, horses, cattle, chickens, and a llama.  We stayed for dinner before heading back down the lonely roads through Circle, MT to Glendive, MT and back to Medora.  It was great to see them again and get a photo to prove that I'm not making the story up.

 Gordon, me, and Sherri.  I thought someone was pinching my butt during this photo, but it was the German shepherd whose back is visible in the lower left hand corner.

On our way back to Medora, we saw several large flocks of sandhill cranes, pronghorns, a coyote, and a porcupine.  I also remarked how while driving Hwy 13 through rural Montana, there are plenty of places where all you can see for miles and miles in any direction is grassy hills.  No lights, no roads, no telephone poles other than the ones right along the road, just big, open, sloping, grassy terrain.  Knowing this makes where my car broke down back in 2008 that much more fortuitous (providential?), for if it had made it any further before quitting, I would have been there with the grass and the hills and no one around and no cell phone.

One thing that I find interesting about the natural setting in eastern Montana is how much the vegetation changes just a few miles west from Medora.  In western Dakota, the prairie is a mid-grass prairie where, depending on the precipitation in a given season, the grass gets somewhere between my knee and my hip.  Just a few miles over into Montana and the prairie changes dramatically into the shortgrass prairie that doesn't get as high as my knee.  It looks completely different: soft, almost manicured.

Reflections on Tanzania

Armed with new video editing software, I have been making video montages of our photos from our 2008 trip to Tanzania.  Each standalone video here is meant to be part of one long video not yet completed and too big to post online.  I did not annotate the videos so as not to clutter them; the penalty for this is they will go by quickly and not answer any of your questions.

I recommend clicking on the links to watch the videos on YouTube since this blog isn't formatted to support the hugeness of the HD videos.

Mt. Kilimanjaro - This was a seven day trip warranting a longer video.  There are two noticeable gaps in time - one is the six hours we spent hiking in pitch blackness to the summit, and most of the rest of that day as we were cruising down the mountain to get out.  I wrote about Kilimanjaro right after we climbed it, in which I probably sounded more exhausted and glad to be done than thrilled with the experience.  It's certainly a challenge to get to the top of the mountain, physically and mentally, but there is little like it.  I haven't climbed or even been on the side of a mountain since.


Lake Manyara - The first stop on our wildlife safari was also our first education in baboons, tsetse flies, and dusty dirt.


Serengeti - We spent the most time in Serengeti, which is a large area.  I learned so much about the animals and their habits from observing them and from our knowledgeable guide, Dennis, of Swala Safaris based in Arusha, Tanzania.  When I first got my Field Guide to African Wildlife, I didn't know how so many animals could live together, but I quickly learned how each preferred a particular habitat or foraging niche.  Impalas are most like deer, so you find them in woods, whereas gazelles are out in the wide open plains.


Ngorongoro Crater - In the bottom of an extinct volcano crater is a virtually encapsulated ecosystem including the endangered black rhino (we saw 5).  Lions there have dark manes, maybe a dynamic of an isolated population.  My favorite thing was the gathering of gray crowned cranes.  My least favorite thing was a black kite stealing a sandwich out of my hand.


Tarangire - We were pretty tired of bouncing around in the back of the Land Rover when we got to the last national park in our tour, but we enjoyed the baobab trees and continued finding new species of birds we hadn't recorded yet.




We also visited Olduvai Gorge and Zanzibar, which I didn't include in the videos because they only included a few photos and neither was really that thrilling.  Olduvai Gorge is mostly a visitor center in bad need of renovation and an outdoor bathroom with a trench urinal from which you can view the gorge while you take a whizz.  My only achievements on Zanzibar were reading The Bin Ladens by Steve Coll, getting angry at people trying to bilk me out of my money, and stupidly drinking a beverage with ice, which I paid for when I got home.

Springtime in the Badlands

It's hard to believe that just a few weeks ago, we still had all the snow, the temperature was still around zero, and it seemed like spring could not come soon enough.  Now things are starting to look up!  The river ice broke up on 3/20 and several days since then have been in the 60s, one in the 70s.  Today, it's raining, bringing some color to the otherwise brown landscape.

Three beavers swim by the broken ice on the Little Missouri River

Downy woodpecker on the hunt

In the wildlife scene, I have been able to see some of the migrating birds.  Some days there are hordes of one or another type of bird, such as the huge groups of mountain bluebirds the first day I saw them.  I saw a couple of tree sparrows, heard a couple of meadowlarks, and saw quite a few bald eagles.

"Snort" says the bull bison.

The other interesting thing that has happened was a mass wasting event along the road.  Melting snow saturated the ground to a point where the topsoil and vegetation slid off onto the road like a raft at mile marker 3 in the south unit.  Previously, the snow in the same area had drifted so high in the blizzards this winter that there was a huge cornice there that eventually fell off in what you might call an avalanche.

The surface of the hill on the left slid onto the road.  This is what it looked like after cleanup.  The badlands are always changing!

 At home, my new sock feeder with nyjer thistle has been a huge success with the goldfinches.  I took this picture in late February.  The males are showing more color now with their spring molt underway.