I spent the past weekend up in the Northern Range of Yellowstone so I could do some wildlife photography.  My goal was for whatever critters I was lucky enough to see, but I had heard of a bobcat hanging out near Phantom Lake.  As much as I'd love to photograph one in the winter, I still struck out.  But I did get lucky with wolves this week, for the first time this winter.

One afternoon, while driving back towards Slough Creek, a grey wolf came down a hill near where I was parked and crossed the bridge over the Lamar River.  She was in heat and was followed by several other wolves, but they never approached the road.  Once the wolf was safely across the bridge, I went across too and parked in a pullout there.  The wolf walked about 100 yards off the road, found a place to nap, and slept for almost two hours.  I watched this by myself for about 90 minutes or so before others finally noticed her.  When she awoke, she howled to the other wolves for several minutes before moving off to rejoin them.  I was going to use the above image, "Winter's Call" as this week's Photo of the Week at www.travelsinbearcountry.com, but after going through some of the other images from that encounter, I've opted to use something else.  Meanwhile, here's two other images from that afternoon.

All of these images were made with a Canon 50D using a Canon 500mm L lens and 1.4 teleconverter mounted on a tripod with a gimbal head.