On the left the grizzly is a subadult four-year-old female working along the beach rolling rocks and looking for food. On the right a mother and cub that was grazing on the sedge grass until she became aware of the other bear…
Tag Archives: Black Bears
Grizzly Bear Cubs 2 of 3
The “mouthing” from yesterday’s post turned into a fight that lasted three or four minutes. Does not seem like a long time but the guests got some great photos. Note that the crow is still in the background eating.
Evening Black Bear Tour 1 0f 2
The first evening at the Grizzly Bear Lodge includes a black bear tour in the local area around the lodge. For the 2015 season it has been harder to find black bears on the evening tour that grizzly bears on the day trip up Knight Inlet. Most guests were able to view black bears some time on their visit as your guide is constantly watching the shore on the whale watching day, grizzly bear trip and the day at the wild river. The above photo was on a whale-watching trip. We spent forty-five or so minutes with this mother and cubs she pass through several small bays rolling rocks and at the edge of the forest eating salal berries.
Busy black bear
Any bear with three cubs has a full time job to find enough to eat to produce the milk to keep a family fed. This photo was taken by Glen one of the camp guides on a morning tour to view grizzly bears. The rock ledge on the way up Knight Inlet is cover with barnacles and seaweed. The barnacles are food for the bear and by looking as the white area (that is where the barnacles have been scrapped away and eaten) it is easy to see that this bear has been busy. The cubs being to young to scrap the barnacles wait for mum to provide the milk.
Black Bear Tours
The idea of a black bear tour is a little misleading as every tour could end up with a black bear sighting. However on your first evening at the lodge we spend an hour or more going for an evening tour to find black bear. The success of the trip depends mostly on the tide because if the tide is high there is no beach and therefore no bears. But this photo shows that some evenings are successful and the reason that part of the bear is cut off is I was trying to show the location of the bear to the boat by getting the bow search light in the picture (that white arc in the lower left corner).
What Kind of Bear? 3 of 3
Also from the National Wildlife Federation website: “Black bears have longer and less rounded ears and a more straight profile from forehead to nose. Black bears have relatively short claws, which enable them to climb trees. Not all black bears are black—their fur can range in color from pure white to a cinnamon color to very dark brown or black.” So checking the photo of the first post for ears, claws and hump it is a brown black. The bear has only been seen once but we do keep looking.
What Kind of Bear? 2 of 3
The National Wildlife Federation website states: “Grizzly bears are large and range in color from very light tan (almost white) to dark brown. They have a dished face, short, rounded ears and a large shoulder hump The hump is where a mass of muscles attach to the bear’s backbone and give the bear additional strength for digging. They have very long claws on their front feet that also give them extra ability to dig after food and to dig their dens.” And is a good description of the bear in this photo but does it match yesterdays post.
What Kind of Bear? 1 of 3
This photo may give some of the readers of this blog a chance to think. Our grizzly bear tours travel up Knight Inlet from the lodge on Minstrel Island to the area of Glendale Cove on a daily basis. This photo was taken several years ago on one of these morning tours and the guest in the boat were not sure that the guide was correct in his statement of the kind of bear. The next two posts will show you the choices.
Black Bear Island Hopping
When you come to Grizzly Bear Lodge all tours that leave the lodge are by boat because we are on an island which is one of several hundred in the area at the mouth of Knight Inlet. If you click on “Google Map Of Itinerary” at the top of this page, then click on the green square in the lower left corner and this becomes a Google Earth Map. It is then possible to zoom in to view the number of varying sized islands. The point of all this is to show that if a bear wants to move around in the area at some time it must swim. This bear is not a particularly fat bear or you would see more of it’s back out of the water but they are interesting to follow as long as you stay back to one side so as not to prevent them from going ashore. However at times we have blocked them from shore when that shore happens to be our island.
Black Bears on the Beach
Finding black bears on the beach is a cooperative effort that includes the guests and guide. If you notice the top half of the beach is in a dark shadow and that makes bears hard to spot when you are running the boat and scanning the beach. All the eyes in the boat need to be on the search for black bears to be successful. It may be the guides “job” but we will gladly take all help and are willing to stop to check even if it is occasionally a rock or log because most of the time it is a bear.
