Brown Bear

Brown Bear Cubs, Alaska

Brown Bear Cubs, Lake Clark National Park
Are we fighting or dancing?

I was in Alaska recently.  I spent the first week of this month photographing brown bears in Lake Clark National Park.  If you’re interested in photographing brown bears, Lake Clark is a good place to go and Silver Salmon Creek Lodge (SSCL), where I stayed, offers excellent accommodations.  In fact, the lodge provides full services, including meals/lodging, flights to and from the lodge and a guide.  My guide, Jim, has an M.S. in Wildlife Biology and his thesis involved bears.  SSCL is already taking reservations for 2019, but I think it still has some openings for 2018.  The lodge is about 100 air miles southwest of Anchorage.    http://silversalmoncreek.com/

If you’re thinking of going, you may be wondering when is  the best time?  That depends. I’ve been there the first and last weeks of July.  My understanding of what happens there in June, July and August follows.

June.  June is mating season.  I understand most of the big boars leave the area by the end of June.  Also, the ones that remain into July have lost their luxuriant winter coats by the end of June, if not before.  What kinds of foregrounds and backgrounds will you have to photograph the bears in in June?  The bears will be feeding primarily on sedge grass, which I like to photograph them in.  They will also be feeding on razor clams when the tide is very low.  That’s another setting I like.

July.  It’s my understanding that the sows with cubs, at least spring cubs, don’t arrive until the big boars have left.  Boars kill and eat cubs.  So, if you want to photograph cubs, July is a good time.  When I was there this year most of the sows and all of the cubs still had their winter coats.  The foregrounds and backgrounds you will have will be the same as in June.

August.  In August, the silver salmon/coho start migrating up Silver Salmon Creek.  The bears will focus on eating as many of them as they can to fatten up for the long winter.  The big boars may return at this time, but you should check with the lodge on that (plus everything else I’ve said).  I don’t know what the color of the sedge grass is in August, but I’m guessing it would still be green.   I don’t think I need to describe the setting for the bears standing in the creek trying to catch salmon.  There are no falls, at least at the lower end of the creek, so don’t expect to photograph bears standing at the top of some falls with their mouths wide open catching jumping salmon, like McNeil Falls is famous for.  But you won’t have to fight with hordes of people either.

Other Bird

Our Tree Swallow Nest Box

Hungry Tree Swallow Chick
Hungry Chick

Our tree swallow chicks fledged today, June 18, Father’s Day.  I knew they were getting close to leaving the nest box, so on Friday and Saturday I spent some time photographing the parents feeding the young.  I missed seeing them leave the nest.

The adults are very fast and agile flyers.  They are to winged insects what peregrine falcons are to most bird species.

I think of them just catching bugs in the air, but I realized in watching them with the telephoto lens that they get vegetation attached to them by apparently also flying into heavy vegetation. The male had a twig sticking out of the right side of his neck and the female had vegetation stuck in her tail.   Fortunately, the vegetation on each came off after a while.  I was worried that the male had impaled himself to some extent, but he finally came in on a feeding run without the stick.

We’ve had the nest box for 6 years and swallows have used it every year.  Unfortunately, all the chicks died last year.   I spoke with a song bird expert and was told that lots of tree swallow nests were unsuccessful last year because of the drought.   Apparently, the dry conditions caused a big drop in insect populations.

Black-tailed Deer

Blacktail Doe and Fawns, Point Reyes National Seashore

Look for fawns throughout the Seashore.
It’s Fawn Time!

Now is a great time to be at Point Reyes.  There are lots of elk calves to see and some deer fawns as well.  I mentioned in an earlier post that I think the heavy winter rains helped increase elk births. I think the same can be said for deer and most other critters.

One thing that I am always amazed at is how fast people drive in the Seashore as they rush to get to some particular location to start enjoying nature.  If they would slow down and scan the fields they would see all kinds of nature’s creations, such as coyotes, bobcats, badgers, elk, deer etc.  Plus, less wildlife would be killed by vehicles.   As Glenn Frey used to sing, “take it easy.”

Grizzly Bear

Grizzly Bear, Yellowstone National Park

A mother grizzly bear walks through the south end of Swan Lake Flat.
A mother grizzly walks through sage.

A well-known place in Yellowstone to look for grizzlies is a large open area called Swan Lake Flat.  It is especially good for seeing grizzly sows with cubs.  I have often seen grizzlies there, but they have always been too far away for good photos.

In May 2015 I got lucky.  I was approaching the flat from the south when I saw a flash of brown out of the corner of my eye.  I stopped and saw a mother grizzly with two two year old cubs walking parallel to the road about 75 yards away.   Unfortunately, they were heading in the opposite direction.  By the time I got the car turned around they had disappeared into some trees.  I drove to a spot that looked like it would be a good place to wait for them and got ready.

As luck would have it, after a minute or two I noticed that there was a very young elk calf between me and where I hoped the bears would pass.  It was standing in a little clump of trees.  Hmm.  Bears love elk calves.  In fact, grizzlies and black bears kill about 50% of the calf crop each year.  What if they see/smell the calf and charge toward it (and me)?  That’s as far as I got in my thinking when the bears came into view.  They didn’t detect the calf and kept going.  The calf got to live another day and I got my photo.

 

Wolf

Famous Yellowstone National Park Wolf Shot and Left to Die

The alpha female of the Canyon Pack

I was saddened to hear a month ago that the alpha female of the Canyon Pack had died.  She was a very popular wolf and one of only a few with white coats.  In the photo above, she was only three years old.  The little bit of dark fur you see in this photo was replaced by white fur as she matured.

It was reported that she had lived twelve years.  That’s a long life for a wolf.  The average life span for a wolf in the park is six years.  I assumed then that she had died of old age/natural causes.

I first got to know her in October of 2008.  She and her three pack mates had killed a bull elk at the north end of North Twin Lake the day before I happened on the scene.  When I arrived there was a large male grizzly protecting the carcass from the wolves.  I was told he took the carcass from them shortly after they had killed it.  That is very common.  Some grizzlies in Yellowstone have learned to follow wolf packs for days until the wolves make a kill and then they take over.

I learned yesterday that she had not died of natural causes.  She had been shot and was found by some hikers.  She was alive, but in bad shape.  The hikers contacted the National Park Service which examined her and determined that she could not be saved.  She was euthanized.  I went from being sad to being angry.

NPS has posted a reward for $5,000 leading to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible.  That amount was matched by a conservation organization, Wolves of the Rockies.  I was told by a friend that the reward has since climbed to $20,000.  You can read more about the story here.

In spite of many suits by conservation organizations to keep wolves protected under the Endangered Species Act, I believe they are no longer under its protection.  However, the wolf was found inside the boundaries of Yellowstone National Park.  NPS has regulations against discharging firearms and killing wildlife in the national parks.  Hopefully, the culprit will be found and successfully prosecuted.

Other Bird

California Quail, Point Reyes National Seashore

A male California quail perches on an old post.
Bad Hair Day

I was in the Seashore several days ago. It was nice most of the day, but later the wind came up and then the fog rolled in.  Nearby Inverness was predicted to have sunny weather all day and when I left Inverness it was still sunny.  Memo to self:  Don’t rely on the Inverness weather report for what it’s like inside the Seashore.