When last I left you, I was in Glendale Cove watching Grizzly Bears, and it was about five minutes after noon. I thought that meant that it was time for lunch, but my guide pulled the boat a little further upstream when the bear we had been watching headed off in that direction.
When we rounded a little bend, we found that our bear had been joined by another. |
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| They seemed to be nosing around, mostly minding their own business. |
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| You know, watching wildlife is great fun, and can be pretty exciting. But there's some excitement that I can do without...like the excitement of a grizzly bear charging at me. That's just not what I want to see. |
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| Well, lucky for me (and even luckier for the guide in the water), the bear pulled up. Seems he wasn't really charging us, but rather running over to investigate something in the water. |
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| That something actually shows as a horizontal line of white in the water, some splashing, and the dark spot in front of the bear in the above photo. |
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The object of the bear's attention is a Spring Salmon: it's the start of their yearly run up the Glendale Creek. We'd seen one or two swimming along and jumping earlier in the day.
Above, the fish is still swimming to the right, roughly in front of the bear. Below, you can see the top of the fish and its tail fin. |
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The bear had shown some impressive quickness to get up to where the fish was. His companion just stood and watched from the sidelines.
The fisher-bear then lined up his paw over his prey... |
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| and powered down into the water after it. |
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| At this point he grabbed the fish with his mouth to pull it out of the water. The force and speed of him doing that caused the fish to wrap around his nose. |
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But Mr. Fish-nose didn't have a solid grip on the fish, and so he ended up watching as it fell back into the water. |
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| The fish sped off, swimming for its life, but this just made the bear more determined. |
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| Unfortunately, the creek was shallow and the fish was headed in the wrong direction. |
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| It soon ran out of room to run, and the bear caught up with it. |
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| This time it didn't get away. |
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| One last little thrash was all the fish had left. |
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| Once the bear got his catch up to a slightly drier area, he put it down in order to consume it. I guess it was time for lunch, after all. |
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Next he did something that greatly endeared him to me. When the other bear ventured a little too close, he snarled a warning. My friends, particularly the ones who eat with me, will recognize the behaviour. |
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| That was just so adorable that I'll show it to you again... |
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and again. This last one's a fully-zoomed-in version; these are the pixels that I see at home. |
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Having warned the other bear off, he returned to his meal. |
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There's something fascinating about watching predators eat their prey. I particularly like watching them solve the problem of how to get the food parts separated from the non-food parts and into their mouth. |
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They've got to do it all without the benefit of forks and knives, or even opposable thumbs. |
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| And this guy, at least, was pretty efficient at it nonetheless. |
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The other bear thought that she might be able to approach more closely if she didn't look like she was looking at the food. |
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The strategy seemed to work pretty well. |
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She was briefly distracted by another fish running up the creek, but I think it was too far away for her to bother running after. |
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By the time she turned back towards the bear with the fish, said bear didn't seem to mind her being close. I suspect that this is mainly because there wasn't much fish left to be possessive about.
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| She nosed around a little, looking for scraps, but didn't find anything worth eating. |
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The bears headed further upstream, and my guide explained that these two are siblings, and that they're about three years old (if I remember correctly).
As the bears walked away, they stopped and engaged in a little play. It was pretty cute, but I'm not sure if I'd want something that big with those teeth and claws horsing around with me. |
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With words, it's impossible to do justice to the experience of watching these animals. What I had seen and reported in the last entry was great, but this lunch-and-play had been spectacular.
During the fish chase, I had almost put my camera down so that I could just watch the event with my own eyes rather than through my viewfinder. It was that absorbing.
It had also been very neat to have seen so much social interaction between these two bears, especially the playing at the end.
When the bears stopped playing and headed farther away, our guide pulled us out; it was now time for the humans to have lunch and get back to the island. As we left, he said that bear-watching doesn't really get any better than this, and although it's probably good business to say things like that to make us feel good about our trip, I think I believe him. It had been an amazing time.
I mean, just how often do you get to see a Grizzly Bear with a salmon wrapped around its nose?
Suitably awed,
Tom
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