Can you spot the grizzly bear family on the Yellowstone landscape?
Grizzly bears in Yellowstone National Park are waking up and most roads will open to automobile traffic next month, which means prime bear-viewing season is just around the corner.
With this in mind I’m presenting a quiz that features my photos from last spring. Can you spot the grizzly bear sow and her three cubs in the image posted immediately below? (Answer at bottom.)
I first spotted the bears at a traffic jam they caused by appearing alongside the highway in Lamar Valley. The newborn cubs were tiny and tourists jockeyed for parking spots and bent themselves into all sorts of positions to try to document the sighting.
But the bears quickly crossed the highway and began to climb over rolling hills opposite the valley, and some of us hiked up a different slope for a better look. (We were well beyond 100 yards and could not have kept up with the bears if we tried.)
Momma bear grazed continuously, with her head down, while the cubs played and tried to keep pace. The sow was so focused on eating that she didn’t realize that a fairly large bison herd was directly in her path.
The bison were on full alert, standing their ground. When momma bear finally looked up and – in what resembled an oops moment – she turned and bolted with her cubs to a safer location.
The bears then continued their climb, away from the bison and the highway, becoming smaller as I watched through my 400-millimeter lens. I found it amazing how quickly they crossed the landscape, considering that the cubs were only a few months old.
The distant bears, in the quiz image, are circled below.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Can you spot the Yellowstone grizzly bear momma and cubs?