I got a text from Autumn yesterday around 12:30. “Wolf Sarah” reported the wolves are tied! I’m hoping Ranger Greg got some photos. I’m working on getting video from Sarah, but in the meantime, here is Sarah’s report of how the morning went:
Today was exciting! This was my first time seeing any of the wolves successfully tied together.
When I first arrived around 10:30, I noticed that 1803 was following 2062, like normal, on the top of the hill and the brothers were hovering around the middle of the hillside, not normal. The dad would “chase” them away if the brothers even seemed to be trying to go on the top of the hill with the adults. 1803 didn’t have to do much to scare them away! (I saw one of the brothers run away from dad faster than I’ve ever seen a museum wolf run!) The pups settled in the middle of the hill for a while and rested, but after about an hour they were pretty consistently wanting to go to the top of the hill. They finally gave up and spent the rest of the time either at the bottom of the hill eating meatballs and dead rats or laying down in the middle of the hill. 2246 seemed to be paying more attention to the adults than 2247.
From 10:30 till noon, 1803 mounted 2062 a handful of times and then would fall off. They spent a brief period around the hollow log and Christmas tree, but the majority of the time was spent on top of the hill. Twice 1803 was very focused on licking her left ear…
Activity started to pick up at noon. 2062 paced a small section of the hilltop and every time she got to one end of the section, she would stop, lift her tail to the side, and 1803 would mount her. Every time.
Sometimes she’d stop and turn just a little, and 1803 would mount her in the wrong directions. That was pretty funny.
Finally at 12:30 they tied!
They were tied together for 14 or 15 minutes. They stayed in the same spot the entire time. Once the mating was over, 2062 was very playful towards 1803 (something I’m not used to seeing from her). 1803 went over and visited one of the brothers lying down on the hillside, not chasing him away. The adults stayed around the same spot where they mated. I couldn’t capture the extent of the female’s activity level, but I still find it interesting because their behavior/body language is just so different from what it was all morning.
I left around 1pm, so 15 minutes after they’d finished.
[…] very active the past several days. The animal department blog has documentation of such activity (keeper blog 2/20) (keeper blog […]