Coyotes of Yellowstone.

Repeat trips to places you just love are always looked forward to with great excitement. There is always the thrill of meeting old friends, and perhaps working with them in new ways, or more simply getting better shots. Yet there is still the potential frisson of finding something new, perhaps something you have dreamed about, you know it's there but have never managed to get an image of it.

This trip to Yellowstone with Dan and Nature’s Images certainly lived up to the billing I had labelled it in my thoughts for the previous year. On my last winter trip I had managed a few good images of coyotes but nothing really special.

This trip was so different in so many ways. I had been to Yellowstone only three months previously working on the elk rut in autumn and we had seen literally a lone coyote. What a difference three months make.

To say the place was snided out with coyotes would be a bit of an exaggeration but we managed to find at least one on every day, we listened to the wild, hair raising calls and we managed to get close to a surprising number.

Our best encounter, was as is always the case, one our group managed to work on without dozens of other photographers descending like coordinated vultures out of an azure sky. We simply walked quietly, then on knees and finally on our bellies until we had every guest lying in a tight line in front of a completely relaxed coyote. We spent a good 15 minutes with an incredibly chilled out animal, its times like this that all the hassle and time spent searching for good photographic opportunities is well worth it.