Tag: brown bear

Brown Bear

Brown Bear, Alaska

This is a photo of a brown bear with long stems of sedge grass in its mouth.

A brown bear munches on sedge grass in Lake Clark National Park.   I’m not sure why it is that brown bears, at least where they are routinely photographed, pretty much ignore humans.  I don’t know of any distance rules regarding the bears in Lake Clark.  Of course, there was the famous case of Timothy Treadwell, a brown bear activist who, along with his girlfriend, was killed by a male brown bear in 2003.

Brown Bear

Brown Bear, Lake Clark National Park

This is a photo of brown bear in Lake Clark National Park.

Brown Bear, Lake Clark National Park

This is a photo from a few years ago in Lake Clark National Park. This female brown bear was feeding on sedge grass, a very important food source until the salmon spawning runs begin.  Her cub was just out of the photo.

Brown Bear

Brown Bear Sow

Brown Bear Takes a Nap Next to Us

Brown Bear Takes a Break

I was with a few others photographing this female brown bear while she was fishing. The silver salmon run hadn’t begun yet at Silver Salmon Creek, but that didn’t stop her from giving it a try.  She caught a starry flounder and then, after a while, a silver salmon.  A larger male bear was also fishing and catching nothing. When she caught the salmon he chased her for several minutes and she was holding onto the fish so hard that one or both ends fell to the ground.  That caused the male to stop.  After the chase she walked toward us.  She kept coming and finally stopped and plopped down not far from our feet.

She had a reputation as a very good fisher.  She also had a rep that wasn’t as nice.  She abandoned her year-old cub not long before this.  We would see it on occasion and hoped and prayed it would make it to and through hibernation.