The coyote and the river otters

Yellowstone National Park is home to nearly 400 species of animals. If you’re a wildlife photographer, the hope is that you will get to capture species interacting with each other.

A bald eagle swooping down to catch a fish is a somewhat common sight. Spend enough time there and you’re also likely to see a fox leap to pounce on a vole. The big hope, of course, is to see one of the park’s famous wolf packs hunt a bison or an elk, but that activity usually occurs miles out of sight.

On my latest trip to Yellowstone, however, I got to see a wildlife encounter that at first glance seemed downright strange: a standoff between a coyote and river otters. And it took place on ice covering the Yellowstone River.

Variations on a sunset

Look at a sky watcher’s chart and you will see sunset listed as a precise moment of time. I, however, prefer to think of it as an event — an event that can last hours.

There’s more to a sunset than the instant when the sun slips below the horizon. Sometimes an hour before, the western sky can begin to turn golden. Puffy cumulus clouds that are low in the sky can go from being pure white to intense yellow.