Soda Butte Creek animal tracks, ouzels and coyote, winterIn early January in Yellowstone you can see ouzels at Soda Butte creek. We stopped to watch and take photos and saw more than we imagined we would.
The tiny dot at the top center of the creek in this photo is an ouzel:
We watched it bob and fly into the creek and swim underwater feeding, then back on the snow bank, seemingly impervious to the cold.
 
We saw pawprints in the snow that went down a bank and crossed an ice bridge over the creek:
 
Notice the blowing snow coming off the bank into the creek:
 
We were being quite quiet, and a coyote came walking along and we watched him sniffing at the tracks in the snow. A coyote's long nose is full of scent receptors and can detect the movement of other animals a mile or more away or days earlier.
 
 
John Muir wrote a long piece about ouzels you can read at:
http://www.abovecalifornia.com/lib/JohnMuir/MountainCa/index.shtml
in chapter XIII THE WATER-OUZEL
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More pictures from this trip are at:
Northern Yellowstone winter wildlife viewing
see also:
Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Park photos
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National Park Service on-line books
Glimpses of Our
National Parks Yellowstone chapter is at:
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/glimpses1/glimpses3.htm
Yellowstone National Park,
Its Exploration and Establishment,
by Aubrey L. Haines (with original water colors by Thomas Moran),
starts at:
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/haines1/index.htm
FAUNA
OF THE NATIONAL PARKS
OF THE
UNITED STATES,
ECOLOGY OF THE
COYOTE
IN THE YELLOWSTONE,
By
ADOLPH MURIE,
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/fauna4/fauna.htm
Yellowstone in the Afterglow, about the effects of the 1988 fire
http://www.nps.gov/yell/publications/pdfs/fire/htmls/intro.htm
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