Grizzly Bear and Wildlife Viewing Blog: Yearly Archives: 2014

Guide Photos

large black bear
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The first day / evening in the lodge involves an hour plus wildlife tour.
This may occur before or after dinner depending on the height of the tide as it is hard to find a black bear on the beach if there is no beach. It is a local tour that familiarizes guests with the boats, the guides and the area around the lodge. The black bear that frequent the shore are less than half the size of the grizzlies mainly because they do not have access to the salmon rivers, which are controlled by the grizzlies. The best way to judge if the black bear is a big bear is the size of its ears in relation to the head. Small Bears:  Will have a small, narrow head, almost dog like.  Their ears will appear to be much larger and defined.  Almost like “Mickey Mouse” is a common description. Big Bears:  Will have a very large, blocky looking head.  Their ears will look small, and almost off to the side of their skull a little.

 

Guide Photos

orca breath
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A pleasant morning with the orca on the lodge’s whale watching safari to Johnstone Strait. This area along the shore of Vancouver Island is the summer home to the Northern Resident killer whales. They follow the salmon into the area arriving, most years, in early June and staying until mid-October. The northern residents contain approximately 250 orca in 16 pods. It is a quite area for viewing the orca in that on most mornings there are only five or six boats in the area watching the killer whales so they tend to behave in a natural way. They are not herded about by twenty or thirty boats, as are the Southern Residents near Victoria BC.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly family meeting
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A mother grizzly and her two cubs visit the viewing stands used by the lodge after August 24th.  The grizzly bears come to the area in the fall because of the abundance of spawning salmon in the river. This abundance allows the bears to feed and gain sufficient weight (140 to 180 kg, 300 to 400 lbs) to last through hibernation. The spring viewing occurs in the river estuary of Knight Inlet’s Glendale Cove where the bears feed on the sedge grass and protein found along the shore. This mother and two-year-old cubs spent the summer along the shore and have recently moved up the river to bulk up for the winter.

 

Guide Photos

whale blow hole
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Over the past five years humpback whales have become more common in he area Grizzly Bear Lodge visits on whale watching days. The area close to Johnstone Straits between Vancouver Island and mainland British Columbia has become the summer home of more than twenty-five whales. The area has an abundant supply of herring and the whales come to feed and stay within our viewing area for a few days before moving in and out of nearby inlets. The whales start appearing in late May and there are whales all summer some days on six or eight but most days more than a dozen whales are lunge feeding and lobtailing in our viewing area.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly siting in pool
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The ending well is who has the right to fish in a certain part of the river and once that was determined food became the main concern. From first seeing the grizzly bear cubs on the beach in the spring to watching them grow over the years the dominance fight is a common theme. And the common source of the fighting is who gets the first salmon from the mother to who has fishing right on the river.

 

Guide Photos

grizzly siblings fight
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If you check the white shoulder patch on the bear in this photo with the bears in yesterdays posting you will notice that these are the same bears. It was an interesting morning on the viewing platform with these two bears constantly play-fighting which sometime seemed to goes a little beyond the “play” part. But all is well that ends well…. more tomorrow.

 

Guide Photos

more grizzly bears fight
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The fall grizzly bear viewing starts after August 24th up the Glendale River. The viewing platform used by Grizzly Bear Lodge is located on a finger of land that has the natural river on one side and the holding pool or entrance to the spawning channel on the other side. This photo taken on the natural side of the river shows to sub-adult or juvenile bears have a disagreement…. more tomorrow.

 

Guide Photos

 

grizzly triplet knight inlet bc
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Grizzly Bear Lodge opens in late May or early June depending on the bookings. The grizzlies do not depend on booking and start to appear along the shore of Knight Inlet by mid-May. On the grizzly bear watching day guest leave the lodge at 8:00 and have an hour and fifteen minute boat ride up the inlet to the Glendale River estuary. Any time in the last twenty minutes or so of the ride it is possible to see grizzlies on the shore and the first hour likely black bear. This photo of mother and triplets was taken in the river estuary and even at this early age one of the cubs is more adventuresome and off (if only a few meters) on its own.

Interesting Guest Photos

humpback mouth
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On the whale watching tour from Grizzly Bear Lodge we are fortunate to view between eight and sixteen different humpback whales each trip. These whales spend their summer in our area feeding on the herring, which provides our guests with ample opportunities to watch them lunge feeding. In a lunge the humpbacks come up beneath a herring ball with mouths open as shown in James Kastelein’s photo. The baleen shown is a row of a large number of keratin plates attached to the upper jaw. These plates have a composition similar to those in human hair or fingernails. They are triangular in section with the largest, inward-facing side bearing fine hairs, which form a filtering mat. The humpback whale has about 330 pairs of dark gray baleen plates with coarse gray bristles hanging from the jaws. They are about 0.6 m (25 inches) long and 34 cm (13.5 inches) wide.

 

Interesting Guest Photos

orca spyhop good
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A Wikipedia quote    “When spyhopping, the whale rises and holds position partially out of the water, often exposing its entire rostrum and head, and is visually akin to a human treading water. Spyhopping is controlled and slow, and can last for minutes at a time if the whale is sufficiently inquisitive about whatever (or whomever) it is viewing.
Generally, the whale does not appear to swim to maintain its “elevated” position while spyhopping, instead relying on exceptional buoyancy control and positioning with pectoral fins. Typically the whale’s eyes will be slightly above or below the surface of the water, enabling it to see whatever is nearby on the surface.
Spyhopping often occurs during a “mugging” situation, where the focus of a whale’s attention is on a boat rather than on other nearby whales. Spyhopping among orcas may be to view prey species. For this a spyhop may be more useful than a breach, because the view is held steady for a longer period of time.” And thanks to James and Wendy Kastelein for the great photo.