The process is simply, amazing! We’re coming up on nesting time when birds select with logic only understood by them to build a nest, lay eggs, and raise the next generation. They know the risks their eggs will endure, with heat from the sun being right at the top of the list. And yet, they build nests in the sun. This is partly because of their size and ease of access and escape. So they have developed strategies to deal with it. The parents, for example, lie on the eggs assuring a constent temp for incubation. And when that temp gets too warm, they stand to let a breeze in while shading the eggs. They tenderly turn the eggs as well, in part, to regulate heat. They do this without the aid of an egg timer! Mother Nature is amazing and it knows the sun can be death!

It wasn’t that cold, perhaps 25-27degrees (F). The Bison had no crusties on them, what morning hoar frost that might have formed was long gone in the beaming sun. The bull was part of a small group of Bison moving from one foraging area to another. Even with the warm temps, I was hoping that the exertion might create a couple of big breaths of “steam” once he reached the top. We traveled to the top of the grade and waited. Not only did I need the bull to be breathing hard for any hope of seeing his breath, but I also needed it to not be locked by the other Bison and at the same time, the breath staying in front of his body. Any breath in front of the snow would disappear against the white. I so lucked out! After about a twenty-minute wait, the group came up, and at the end, he was clear, and the breeze took the breath in front of his dark body. He wasn’t mad, just tuckered!

At times, it seems that’s what they are expressing, unless you were there to know the BTS. In this case, this small group of American Bison was on the move in Yellowstone’s Hayden Valley. We came upon them at the bottom of a grade, and we could barely see their breath cause it was 18 degrees, bloody warm! They were heading up a hill though and like any other critter, exerting themselves to climb a hill. I knew when they reached the top, they would be breathing hard. So the snowcoach took us to the top of the grade, where there was a pull off. And there we waited for about thirty minutes. Then they came up and sure enough, they were panting, and the steam was bellowing. But the cow’s eyes seem to same, where have you been?