Grizzly Bear and Wildlife Viewing Blog: Monthly Archives: April 2014

Guide Photos

grizzly triplets on log
Click to enlarge then click again

April 8th posting shows a May cub while these three are also first year cubs this photo was taken some time after August 24th when we are permitted to use the viewing stands on the Glendale River’s spawning channel. Three months has passed and even though this mother is feeding triplets they are allot larger than the May cub. A several more months of eating salmon and these three should be ready to den for the winter. The survival rate for cubs in our viewing area in quite good. It is common on the grizzly tours to see mothers with sets of twins and triplets in the spring that we had viewed the previous year.

 

Guide Photos

 

stumps
Click to enlarge then click again

The old stumps such as seen in the above photo are found along the road to the grizzly bear viewing stands, on the forest walk on the extra day spent at the “wild river” and on the walking trail behind Grizzly Bear Lodge. The notches cut into the stump, on the right, were for the springboards used by hand loggers. These boards were to raise the loggers up the tree trunk to an area that was narrower than at the base were it would take less time to “fall” the tree. Remember that hand logger means the long two-man hand saw using “armstrong” power and not motorized.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly first year cub on a rock
Click to enlarge then click again

Grizzly bear watching from our lodge in Knight Inlet starts in late May. At this time of the season the mother grizzlies bring their cubs, born in the den between January and March, to the beach for the first time. The three or four month cubs are very timid the first time they see a boat but when the mother ignores the “clicking cameras” so do the cubs but they are still alert to our presence. If the size of a dog pup’s feet is an indication of its eventual size then this cub will develop into a good-sized bear.

 

Guide Photos

orca pods
Click to enlarge then click again

Killer whales live in tight-knit families or pods, which are matriarchal family groups. Animals born into a pod stay in the pod their entire lives.  Each matriline often contains three or more generations. The head female or matriarch leads the pod, as orcas are a female dominated species. The matriarch tends to be the oldest female in the extended family. Her experience and knowledge guides the pod, and the matriarch teaches younger dolphins about everything from parenting skills, feeding tactics, and navigation through the vast territories that they cover.

Orcas have long life expectancies, 60 to 80 years for females and 40-60 years for the males. Females have the ability to reproduce as early as 14 years of age, but it is more common to see a female first calf at around 17 to 18 years old. Males reach sexual maturity between the ages of 17 and 20, but DNA research has revealed that older males are more successful. An orca gestation period averages 16 to 18 months.

 

Guide Photos

black bear crossing
Click to enlarge then click again

Although this photo does not have a date to determine the time of the year it was taken late in the season likely September. Fall bears have a pretty good layer of fat and this means they float much higher in the water. The early season black bears often have only their head out of the water and very little of their back. As I mentioned in yesterdays post the lodge is in an area of many small islands and bears are good swimmers that travel between island.  It seems that they believe in the “grass in greener on another island” philosophy. This same philosophy has brought several grizzly bears to Minstrel Island where our lodge is located. As the population of grizzlies grow in the area of Knight Inlet it has become more common it see grizzlies on the evening black bear tours and while looking for whales and orca.

 

Guide Photos

eagle sunning
Click to enlarge then click again

Yes there is a bald eagle on the centre of the rocky island. The area between Minstrel Island the home of Grizzly Bear Lodge and the shore of Vancouver Island along Johnstone Strait has hundreds of small islands. On the whale watching tour from the lodge we pass many islands and along their shore are dozens of eagles and often black bears.  The black bears require a low tide to encourage them to scour the beach for food. This inter-tidal zone “food” is high in protein and is made up of crab, clams, barnacles, amphipods and other tiny invertebrates. The guests that have not spent much time on coastal waters are always amazed at the amount of wildlife that can be viewed before we get to the area of the humpback whales, killer whales and other marine mammals.

 

Guide Photos

grizz;u hungry
Click to enlarge then click again

The same grizzly bear from yesterday’s post eating the salmon it caught. It is not uncommon to have 6 or 8 bears at the entrance to the spawning channel catching and eating salmon. There is not much aggression between the bears because of the abundance of food. There may be some challenges to the better fishing spots but when even the poor spots provide more than enough salmon the aggression does not become violent enough to shed blood. I have talked with guides that work the rivers in northern BC and southern Alaska and their grizzly bears have numerous scars and many open wounds due to fights over the rights to fish salmon.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly caught salmon in mouth
Click to enlarge then click again

This is the classic pose for a grizzly bear. The photo was taken from the viewing stands on the Glendale River in Knight Inlet BC. The late summer grizzly viewing, after August 24th, requires a short van ride (fifteen minutes) from a floating dock in the river estuary to the man made spawning channel. The grizzlies of the Knight Inlet area, which is on the southern edge of the Great Bear Rainforest come to this river to feed on the fall, run of spawning salmon. The day tours from our lodge on Minstrel Island use these viewing stands and often view more than a dozen different grizzly bears in the immediate area of the stands as well as grizzlies on the drive to the stands. If one looks closely in the water in front of the bear there are many salmon on their way to the spawning channel and the main reason the bears pose for this photo.

 

Guide Photos

breaching h;unpback whale on side
Click to enlarge then click again

All photographs of breaching humpback whales are a result of a certain amount of LUCK. For the past several years the whale watching days from Grizzly Bear Lodge has the guest viewing between ten and sixteen whales each tour. This means good photo of humpbacks tail lobbing, lunge feeding and surfacing close to the boats however the unpredictable nature of a breach means pictures are rarer.  This breach from the head on perspective is very unusual.