With this confidence the grizzly takes the salmon to one side of the river and starts to eat. This works for a few minutes…
Grizzly Bear and Wildlife Viewing Blog: Monthly Archives: January 2016
A Grizzly story in Six parts 4 of 6
The second non-family member grizzly finally catches its first salmon and immediately looks toward the mother. This bear is a four or five year old male and seems pretty confident…
A Grizzly story in Six parts 3 of 6
The larger bear did not put up a fight. The mother took the salmon and the cubs back to the nook or their dinner table. The story continues…
A Grizzly story in Six parts 2 of 6
The mother prior to this picture had caught and shared two salmon with her cubs. The large female in this photo had caught her first fish when the mother came over and took it away…
A Grizzly story in Six parts 1 of 6
Our lodge, after August 24th, uses viewing platforms on Knight Inlet’s Glendale River. On this day in mid-September a mother with two cubs were “sharing” a prime fishing area with two other grizzly bears. The mother was an aggressive bear but the cubs tended to stay back in a nook in the bank unless a salmon had been caught…
Black Bear mother and cub
Although all species of bears, including black and grizzly bears, are technically of the order Carnivora, they are essentially omnivores that eat plants, insects, fish, and animals. On this day we watched this mother and cub for more than thirty minutes as they moved along the beach turning over rocks in search of food that is high in protein and is made up of crab, clams, barnacles, amphipods and other tiny invertebrates. These two also ate some seaweed and finished off their search in a patch of salal berries. It was a learning time for the cub as it followed mother and copied her every action.
Transient Orca 2 of 2
Yesterdays and today’s photo shows that not all days are ideal whale watching days but it is still possible to get some good pictures. On this day we were trying to keep up with a pod of transient orca with three other boats but we had all lost contact so shut off our motors to wait. We were the lucky boat in that they popped up all around our boat. As today’s photo shows they circled the boat and came quite close. The advantage of the rougher waters is that the orcas tend to come out of the water a little more to breathe.
Grizzly Bear Tour Itinerary Overview
Please click the markers on the map to learn more about each destination on our wildlife adventure tours.
To view the location of the Fall “Viewing Platforms”:
To the left of the title “World of Grizzly Bear Lodge and Safari” click on the little “arrow” and then scroll down to the bottom and to the left of “Made with Google My Maps” click on the “Green Box”. This changes the map to the Google Earth / satellite View. Place your cursor over the “Blue Teardrop” to the right, the one near “Glendale Cove”. Zoom in using your cursor or the “+” and keep the right end of “Tom Brown Lake” in the center of the page. Focus on the zig-zag man made spawning channel. As you get closer you will see a small weir / dam which regulates the salmon into the spawning channel. The stretch of water below the dam is the holding pool for the salmon. The roof of each viewing platforms is visible. One is near the weir and one at the other end of the holding pool.
Itinerary Day 1
Leave Campbell River, on Vancouver Island, late afternoon in your float plane. Enjoy the view of the Coast Mountains, channels and fjords as they pass below. Land at Sailcone’s Grizzly Bear Lodge on Minstrel Island, the center of the Knight Inlet wilderness area. Get settled in, relax, tide permitting – set out on a short local trip to view Black Bear feeding on the beach.
Return to the lodge and enjoy a delicious dinner and learn some background on the wildlife of the area. Off to bed.
Itinerary Day 2
Rise early. Coffee and breakfast and into your boat. You are off to Johnstone Strait, the summering grounds of the Orca [Killer Whale]. Cruise the area observing pods of these magnificent mammals. In our area we are lucky to have both the transient (mammal feeding) and resident (fish eating) Orca. Humpback whales are abundant and with a little luck they have been known to put on some spectacular shows for our lucky guests. Besides the whales the strait is alive with Stellar Sea Lions, Harbour Seals, White Sided Dolphins, Dalls Porpoise and an abundance of bird life including countless bald eagles. On the trip to and from the whale watching area Black Bears can often bee seen feeding on the beach. Our whale watching trips take place on inside waters, away from the open ocean swells. In the summer it is often flat calm for much of the day. After a beach lunch or boat picnic there is more exploring and wildlife viewing and then back to the lodge for a hearty dinner.
