It seems like any edge of Yellowstone Lake that is not perfectly round has a name. If the lake bumps out, it is a bay. If the land bumps out, it is a point.

Just past Bridge Bay Campground is a two mile stretch of road called Gull Point Drive. It leads to, you guessed it, Gull Point Picnic Area. What? You thought it led to Gull Point? Bah! You think there are any points in Yellowstone without picnic areas? We are surprised they did not start putting picnic areas in the bays.

Okay. That is an exaggeration. There are some points without picnic areas; those points have hiking trails.

When we arrived at Yellowstone in May, Gull Point Drive was closed, and we forgot about it. We saw it driving back from Grand Prismatic Spring, so we decided to head back to it in the late afternoon because it gave access to the shore of the lake in an area that we normally just drive by. On the way out for the day, we stopped at Fishing Bridge General Store, and a Bald Eagle landed in the tree in front of us. Well… In front of us and forty feet up.

The pictures with the blue background are very slightly over exposed. When John realized this, he corrected for it, but the background had changed to ugly grey clouds. You can see the difference in the detail of the feathers on the left side of the head between the two pictures below.

Someone asked me a question, and while I was answering, the eagle flew away. I seem to miss a lot of the birds taking off due to that. When we came out of the General Store, it had landed across the street and dropped its fish. We had pictures of the eagle from closer up with better lighting, so we headed off to Gull Point Drive.

When we arrived at Gull Point Drive, we found out that we are not the only ones that know about it. This is not surprising, but it was disappointing. Gull Point Drive has a bunch of pull-off viewing areas off the lake and at least three ponds protected by sand bars. The ponds are located at either end and the middle. We drove to the other end and stopped at the last pond.

The parking was a potholed single car pull off with a trail leading into the woods, but no one else was there! This area has a long skinny pond that is home to a few duck species that we have seen before – Lesser Scaup and Bufflehead.

The Lesser Scaup couple and a fishing boat were cooperative, but the Bufflehead flew away before John got close enough for pictures.

The tiny speck to the right of Kate’s hat is John failing to get a picture of a Bufflehead. The white speck in the water is probably the fishing boat.

Next, we went to the picnic area. It had fishermen, picnics, and families with kids running around. At least the mother kept her kid on a short leash at the beach. The picnic area has a steep-ish trail leading to a beach that encloses a round-ish pond. We saw a sandpiper on the walk out to the point, but it was too skittish to photograph. There was also Raven sitting on the point that was not scared of us at all. You can see the Raven in both panoramas.

There was a white speck out in the water at the end of the point that turned out to be a seagull pecking at a dead fish. Of course, John had to photograph it, so Kate watched it through her scope. We tried looking up the species, but the juvenile California Gull and Ring Billed Gull look almost identical. The fish was too low in the water, but the yellow looks like a Yellowstone Cutthroat Trout.

About that time, a California Gull adult flew onto the scene. Apparently, they are misnamed. They are not specific to California; they are in a lot of states.

And the juvenile gull just kept pecking away at the fish like it was a full time job. An immature gull joined him, but the immature gulls of the two species look very similar too.

While walking around to the other side of the pond, we saw a few other fishing boats on the lake. These looked like aluminum rental boats.

On the other side of the pond, we saw several ducks come out of the reeds with a line of ducklings behind them. They were dark colored on dark water with back lighting. The new camera does not focus well in low light or low contrast situations. We have duckling pictures, but they are not great. We thought it was a Goldeneye at first, but it turned out to be a Bufflehead female and ducklings.

The fourth picture has a different duck in focus. It looked like it might be an immature or female American Wigeon. We have no idea why they were traveling together.

The ducklings were moving around a lot, so we were guessing between 5 and 7 of them. Reviewing the pictures and video, we found six ducklings.

On the walk back to the car around the pond, we ran across a few Killdeer. John thought it might be the sandpiper from earlier, but it was not.

The drive home was oddly uneventful. No animal jams. No slow drivers. No cars parked half in the road. It was kind of like the Twilight Zone.