Wildlife professional photographer Erin Braaten of Dancing Aspens Image remained in the ideal place at the right time earlier this week at Yellowstone National forest. Though she missed out on the birth by just a number of minutes, Braaten still recorded the images of a lifetime– a newborn white bison calf, an uncommon sight indeed.
In an interview with Cowboy State Daily, Braaten said when she spotted the calf, she initially thought it was something else completely. “We were simply driving along, and there were some bison crossing the roadway,” she said. “I was looking back, and I saw what I thought maybe was a coyote.”
Upon closer assessment, she understood it was a bison calf … a white bison calf. A lot more extraordinary, it clearly had just been born.
“The afterbirth, the placenta was still there, and the calf was just standing up,” Braaten informed Cowboy State Daily.
See Braaten’s pictures of a newborn white bison calf born in Yellowstone here:
For some, seeing the white variation of an animal that’s not usually white is a promise. As for why the calf is white, it’s possible it has a hereditary anomaly called leucism, which can cause white coloration on the skin or fur.
Wildlife photographer Erin Braaten recorded the pictures of a lifetime today in Yellowstone National Park: a newborn white bison calf.