Tag Archives: Grizzly Bears

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.

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

Unhappy grizzly cub

Grizzly cubThis photo taken in late September shows a seven month old grizzly cub waiting for mother to provide lunch. It would be lunch as our time on the viewing stand on the Glendale River is between ten and noon.  Mother cannot be to far away because at this age the cubs do not leave their mother side for very long. Mother will be close by fishing for the pink salmon that have come into the river to spawn. There are several rocks in this part of the river that are favourite perches for the hungry cubs.

 

Grizzly Bear playing or eating Set 2

Grizzly eatingGrizzly eating Grizzly eatingThis is the case of a lazy fishing grizzly.  This bear is in a reasonably deep hole compared to the water just 30 meters (90 feet) up stream.  The grizzlies up stream often wound salmon which die and drift down to this lower pool where this bear waits to scoop up the salmon without wasting any energy chasing the salmon.  From the first picture is yesterdays post you can see the fish is not moving and it is just a matter of getting the salmon in the right position to eat or it could be considered playing with ones food. Either way the final photo seems to depict a satisfied grizzly.

 

 

Grizzly Bear playing or eating Set 1

Grizzly eatinggrizzly with salmonGrizzly eatingGrizzly Bear Lodge is one of two lodges that have access to viewing stands on Knight Inlet’s Glendale River.  Access is granted after August 24th each year. After a boat run up Knight Inlet in the morning you transfer to shore and a fifteen-minute van ride to the viewing stands on Glendale River’s man-made spawning channel.  Our access time is from ten to noon each day.  There are two stands available of which we prefer the second as it is on both the natural river and the spawning channel entrance.  Directly below the stand is a deeper area, which holds the pink salmon before they go over the weir in to the spawning area.  This is the site of the above photos.

Click to enlarge then click again

Juvenile Grizzly Bears Fishing

 “Not all fishmen are created egual” this saying applies to grizzly bears as well as humans.  Some bears seem to spend much of their time running and splashing in the water without catching many fish.  But the key to their succes is the size of the bear.  Although the two grizzlies in the photo appear to be three year olds they also look pretty healthy for this time of the year so their fishing style must be working.

Juvenile Grizzlies Fishing

 

 

Grizzy Bear Migrating

Grizzly swimmingGrizzly just out of waterThe photos are not as clear as they could be but my excuse is that I was maneuvering the boat while taking photos one-handed.  The interesting aspect is the location. We were heading back to the lodge from a day’s successful whale watching to find this grizzly swimming between islands.  We were about eight miles from the lodge toward Vancouver Island.  It has become more common in the past five years to see and have reports of grizzly bears in the area of the lodge and closer to Vancouver Island.  As a result of the healthy population of grizzly bears in Knight Inlet the sub-adult bears are being forced out of the area and are starting to migrate down the Inlet and across Johnstone Strait to take up residence on Vancouver Island.  Grizzly bears have been sighted on the Island from Sayward to Port McNeil. To view a map of the areas mentioned scroll down the sidebar on the left to “Pages” then to “Google Map of Grizzly Bear Lodge Itinerary”.