Grizzly Play Fight

Play fightMother grizzly and cub or siblings they still spend time enjoying each other’s company. This is a common scene on one of the lodge’s grizzly tours to the Glendale River.  Once the appetite is satisfied the bears take time out to socialize.  It is good that it is playing because the size of the claws indicates that some damage could occur if it became serious.  In this case I would go for siblings, if your notice the size of the paw in the lower left corner of the picture is similar in size to the one in the upper right.

 

Copy and learn

Copying momThis grizzly bear cub, on BC’s  Glendale River on Knight Inlet, even has its mother’s colouring. Cubs tend to learn by seeing and doing.  In this case the cub has taken to a rock because it is a little warmer and it lacks the layer of body fat of the mother.  Also the force of the water might make it hard for it to remain in one place.  Both are looking down river and waiting for another school of pink salmon to arrive in the entrance of the spawning channel. Waiting for lunch.

Evening black bear tour

Black Bear cubOn the first evening at the lodge, if the permits, you set out on a short local trip to view Black Bear feeding on the beach. The “tide permits” is important because you need a low tide to have a beach to give the black bears some palace to turn over rocks to look for high protein food made up of crab, clams, muscles, barnacles, amphipods and other tiny invertebrates. The coastal black bears are small compared to the grizzlies, as they do not have access to the salmon rivers because of the grizzlies.  The bears only grow to the size that access to food permits the more protein rich the food the larger the bear. The first year cubs follow their mother closely and take clues from them to determine what is “good food”.

 

Perfect day for pictures

Killer Whales (orca)It does not matter what the subject of you photo, when you are on the water, you do not want a bright sunny day.  Guests in the lodge are often upset as most mornings are overcast with the clouds burning off by noon.  That is the nature of the north coast and that is good. Bright sun reflecting off the water makes for a poor picture whether of a grizzly bear on the shore, eagle in a tree or orca swimming. Most afternoons on the water are spent maneuvering the boat so the sun is at our backs to improve your chance of a good photo.

 

 

Grizzly bear spring cub

Grizzly moher & cubThe end of May and this mother grizzly and cub has found it’s way to the shore on Knight Inlet. Born in January or February makes this cub four to five months old and a new member of the “Grizzly Bears of Knight Inlet Family”.  The shore of the inlet has few large male grizzlies this time of the year as they are waiting the arrival of the salmon in August and tend to be nearer the river mouths of the Inlet. This photo was taken several miles from the mouth of the Glendale River our ultimate destination for the day’s grizzly bear tour. But you never pass up a photo opportunity especially one involving a cub.

 

Humpback whale identification

Humpback whale tailHumpback whales are identified by “Researchers (who) use photographs of the ventral surface of the tail flukes to identify and track movements of individual whales and to estimate abundance. Patterns of pigmentation, scarring and shape of the flukes are unique to each individual.” If you Google “Humpback whale identification” and scroll down to the Fisheries and Oceans Canada site titled “Photographic Catalogue of Humpback Whales in British Columbia” and once in the site scroll to “Photographs and data may not be used without permission. Please refer to “Conditions of Use”” and click on the Conditions of Use and you will have access to their catalogue identifying humpback whales in the lodges viewing area.

 

 

Grizzly yawning

Tired grizzly
Click photo the click again to enlarge

This grizzly bear on the Glendale River has it’s mouth stretched wide open in mid- morning yawn. Yawning can be a sign of stress for a bear, or it can be, simply, yawning. In this case a yawn is a yawn as this bear had been resting on the side of the road near the viewing stands we occupied when it got up, yawned, and moved to the river to resume fishing for pink salmon.

Why you want a guided tour

Non Guided

Too close

This was a late August trip to the Glendale River on Knight Inlet.  The tide was rising so we were up the river in the lodge’s eighteen-foot flat-bottomed skiff.  Using the skiff permits us to travel up the shallow river and gain closer access to the grizzly bears feeding on the sedge grass in the delta or estuary. On this day a “tourist boat” was anchored is the river mouth and they were up rive in their zodiack and much too close to the grizzly wanting to cross the river. We tried to get the zodiack to move back without much luck.  Fortunately the bears in the area accept the small boats as a fact of life and tend to ignore them but I prefer to give them a little more room.  The etiquette of grizzly bear watching is not to get so close that you prevent them from going where they want and behaving in a natural manner.

 

 

 

 

Bald eagle

Bald Eagle

An almost white headed bald eagle. The Hancock Wildlife Foundation site states “Bald Eagles are not bald at all, but have a white head. Hundreds of years ago the English word for WHITE was BALDE and the word piebalde meant mottled with white, so the eagles with white heads were called Balde Eagles.” I use this quote to mention the Hancock Wildlife Foundation so if you are interested in bald eagles Google their name to arrive at their site where they have live webcams of an eagle’s nests.

Grizzly cub like mother

Grizzly cub turning rocks

Grizzly bears in the spring and early summer spend much of their time on the beach in search of food.  Turning over rocks in the inter-tidal zone provides “food” high in protein. Food made up of crab, clams, muscles, barnacles, amphipods and other tiny invertebrates. In this photo mother is eating the muscles growing on the log and possibly some of the seaweed while the cub is trying very hard to turn over a good sized rock.  This is a July photo and the mother is still growing new fur that was rubbed off during hibernation.