News from Newport,RI

All of today's news comes from Newport RI!  Becca and Eric are spending some time at 3 Sunset Hill Road, and Becca reported that she saw on the Yellowstone website that the first grizzly bear of the season was sighted yesterday.  And also that the Lamar Canyon pack of wolves,whose alpha female 06 was shot when they ventured out of the park, and missing from the park for more than 3 months, has returned to the Lamar Valley! We missed them by one day, but there was great viewing of the pack in the park yesterday.  We'll have to get in soon, maybe even our first early morning trip, to try to catch a viewing.
Thank you Becca, for the Montana news.  We could have had this whole adventure maybe by just sitting at 3 Sunset Hill and keeping an eye on the web!!
Betsy had just asked earlier in the day yesterday, when I guessed the first grizzlies would begin coming out of hibernation.
I took Loki for a morning walk up the Tom Miner Road, yesterday, and was distracted by airplane noise ( not a usual sound in the basin).  It was a small spotter plane, used by the wildlife folks when trying to track radio collars, or visually estimate populations of wildlife.  It did four low circles around hills just to our north, flew south, then came back into the valley and did  four low circles (well below peaks of tallest hills and nearby mountains) just to our south and east.  Clearly, they are very interested in something right here by Sam's ranch where we are staying, in the middle range of the Tom Miner Basin.  We have heard there are two wolves to our south , and across, the road, two wolves to our north- so it may have been wolf watch.  As the elk are beginning to move further up in altitude as browse shows beneath melting snow cover, it could also have been elk they were estimating.
Calving complications yesterday-  twins were born, a different calf died and Matt put the mom and one of the twins in the barn to see if he could get her to be surrogate mother for one of the twins.  There had been a very difficult birth the night before, and both mom and calf were very weak ( and calf was not nursing as mom was down). We monitored all day.  This morning, it seems the surrogate twin is doing OK, the weak mom and calf seem better and the calf is nursing, and there were two new healthy calves born in the night.
Windy and in the teens during the night, with slushy snow and mud freezing at night- not easy for the newborns.  Those calves that thrive are growing every day, and full of beans- frolicking, running, bouncing and twisting and hopping in every direction.  And there are around forty of them now.  Which is a lot, but it is hard to believe half are still yet to be born.  Certainly a grueling time of year for Matt.
He'll have help from his daughter Caitlin this afternoon doing more ear-tagging and record keeping.  I forgot to include a post of earlier ear-tagging operation:

Julie and Hannibal (owners of the ranch with the Schoolhouse) fly in tonight from Alaska, where Hannibal is currently superintendent of schools in a far northwestern remote school district larger than Minnesota with a total of 800 students.  They've flown south, for sun and warm during their spring vacation!  All is relative, I suppose.