Alaska Brown Bears - Day 5

 

Day 5 – Wed July 29

Started off the morning, getting up early, as there were already 3 bears on the beach shortly after sunrise.  

The first bear we saw was a youngster and he left pretty quick after we got there, passing by us and heading in the direction we had just come from.  We could see that there was a sow and cub heading into the main river area and think that maybe the young bear didn't want to deal with a protective mom this early in the morning.

First bear of the morning but he didn't stick around long

In just a matter of minutes there were three different mama bears heading our way, each with a single cub tagging along side them. Two of the cubs were spring cubs and the third was at least 2 years old now.  We took our spots along the river again, this time making sure we would have much better light working in our favor than we'd had the afternoon before.

Each set of bears reached the river and looked around,  but none of the them seemed to be too serious about fishing yet this morning and mostly seemed content with eating grass and wandering up and down the river giving halfhearted attempts at fishing.  We just sat there enjoying the small parade going past us as the bears would slowly head up the river and out of site.  

The soon to be "bullies" showed up first

They slowly crossed the river looking around but not really fishing

They made one last pass before heading up river and out of site for a while

The second sow and cub of the morning.  She would turn out to be the most dominant

They were confident as they approached the river

Mama spent a little time looking for fish, but didn't see any she liked I guess.  The cub was more interested in watching us.

At one point, a young sow and her cub were just getting to the river to the left of us, when the sow that had passed us earlier with the older cub started coming back downstream.  The two year old cub must have been feeling his oats this morning because he locked eyes with the young mom and cub and started to hurry down the river in their direction, and the young sow and cub got scared to took off running the back the way they came from.  The older cub seemed pretty proud of himself and then him and the mama bear went to check out the area they'd just chased the other two away from.  They spent a lot of time sniffing every rock and blade of grass the other two had touched, and reminded me of how dogs act when they can smell another dog in their area.

Young sow and her spring cub

She seemed the most cautious of the three mamas this morning

She suddenly had to scratch that itch

The bullie cub saw the sow and her cub as she scratched on the rocks

After looking like he might chase them, he slowed down and just stared as they ran off

Now looking back up river, we saw the first sow and her spring cub heading down the river in our direction again.  Now it was the bullies turn to have the tables turned on them.  The bully sow stood on her hind legs staring up the river at the two coming her way and watched them for a few minutes like that.  He cub started to get nervous too and at one point stood up on his hind legs as well, only he was looking everywhere but up river.  LOL  Now these two decided they'd better get out of there and they quickly left the river bank, away from the two they had chased off just 10 minutes before.  It was funny to see how fast the tide had changed and to watch the hierarchy between the bears play out in front of us like that.  It was obvious that out of the three mama bears in the meadow this morning, this one headed our was was the dominant one.

He come the dominant sow and her cub again

The bullies suddenly don't seem so sure of themselves

The smell of victory - or the smell of the scared bears.  Depends on  your perspective.

The new dominant mama and her very active and brave young’un pranced around, sniffing the grass that the others had just vacated, and then wandered back and forth kind of watching to make sure the area was now theirs…. Not that they did any fishing or anything exciting with it now that everyone had been scared away.  They wandered around for a while and then slowly drifted off into the high grass.

The mama and cub spent quite a bit of time wandering around, eating grass but never fished

After a short break of not much happening we then saw a series of individual bears come down the river, walking past us and watching the river but not really seeing any salmon in there, they headed into the meadow to eat grass.   It was only just as we thought we might head back to the boat that a bigger bear started down the river towards us, and then proceeded to fish the river about 10 feet in front of us for the next 30 minutes.  He splashed up and down the deep part of the river in front of us, getting up on his back legs to get a better view of the fish and once again splashing around like crazy trying to catch them.  He managed to finally catch one and took it up on the far bank to devour the entire fish.  The funny part was just as he took his last bite he saw another salmon flash by and he was racing into the river splashing around again trying to grab it before he probably swallowed the last of the first fish.   When he missed, he climbed back out of the river and want over to make sure he had indeed finished the first one off… before getting back in the river and starting the whole dance all over again.  It made for some great photos ops and even got a little video footage of him splashing around.

Solo bear time

Watching for fish but didn't see any he liked

Now this bear has a hankering for some salmon

He decided he wasn't going to mess around and got busy right away

See how easy that was?

Gotta get high to see through the glare of the water

He saw it, but just didn't catch it

Once he decided he was tired and wasn’t going to catch anything else… he headed back up the river and we went back to the boat for lunch.

Went back to the land after a nice break and found 4 bear there…. Two totally sleeping away in the heat of the afternoon.  We watched a couple of other bears come and go right past us, all the while watching the river but not seeing enough fish to catch their interest I guess and on they went.  Not a whole lot happened this evening with the bears….  Although we had a couple of really close passes by younger bears as they just kept moving around us, teasing us with the idea we might get another fishing exhibition.  As the sun went down behind the mountain we decided to call it a day and headed back toward the pick-up spot for the boat… passing 4 bear on the way…. Two sleeping and two just eating grass.   By now that has become so common a site that we barely even paid attention to them.   We’re hoping for cooler weather tomorrow which hopefully will leave the bears with more energy than they showed us today. 

Alaska Brown Bears - Day 3

Day 3 – Mon July 27, 2020

The engine fired up at 5:50am and it was time to cross Shelikof Straight. The open ocean was the roughest water of the trip so far, but still nothing compared to the Drake straight on the trip to Antarctica last December.  It was slow going and took us about 5 hours to cross the straight and finally we pulled into Hallo Bay.  This is an area with very unpredictable winds and weather and we were warned that we might not be able to get into the bay, but luck was on our side today, as the weather was beautiful and almost TOO hot really. 

Hallo Glacier coming down off the mountain made for a very cool backdrop against the beach and open meadows beyond.  There was one other boat in the bay when we pulled in and we spotted a mama bear and 3 cubs down near their boat so we decided to head up the beach away from them and over the berm into the open meadow beyond.  After a short hike, we spotted another mama bear and her cub off in the distance, near a stream that crossed the open area.  When we got to the stream and started to walk along the banks, we passed over a lot of bear track including one set of prints that were easily the size of a big dinner plate.  It was hard to miss that you were certainly in bear country now…. Even if you hadn’t already spotted 5 of them before you’d been on land a couple of minutes.

We continued walking down the bank of the stream and lost sight of the sow and her cub.  They must have wandered off into the tall grass on the other side of the river to escape the heat.  We kept walking through and as we came to the top of a small hill, we saw yet another mama bear with cubs, this one had three yearlings with her.   A little behind those 4 was also another bear… most likely an adolescent that had been sent off on his own in the last year or so.

We decided to head down and cross the river and work our way to the far side of the mama bear and her cubs, to get the sun to our back for a better chance at good photos.  This also gave us a chance to make sure all the bears could see us and get used to our presence and we could get a read on how they were going to react to us being there.  It quickly became apparent that the sow and her cubs couldn’t care less that we were there, but the adolescent bear got up and started moving away from us and crossed another stream so it had a little more distance between us.

We found a good spot and settled in to watch these 4… while keeping an eye on the bear across the river to make sure he didn’t decide to come back our way and squeeze us in between him and the mama bear.  The babies and mama just grazed away in the meadow barely even bothering to look up at us.  It was a hot day and after a while, a couple of cubs decided it was time for a water break and one decided even better, that it was time to just lay in the water for a bit to cool off.   The other cub stuck pretty close to mama the whole time and one of the two more adventurous cubs quickly joined them again, while the third continued to just do his own thing.   The guide told us he was the single boy cub and that the two females tended to stay closer to mom than he did.  

We got to watch one of the cubs begging to nurse and the mama bear just totally ignoring her, but she was persistent  and the more noise she made about wanting to nurse the closer the other two cubs got as well, and after a while the mama bear gave in, and brought the cubs closer to us before sitting up and looking right at us and then flopping back onto her back only to be pounced on by her cubs.  The three of them only fed for about 5 minutes before we realized all 4 of them had totally fallen asleep... the cubs right on top of mama. 

After about 20 minutes, mama bear woke up and wanted to get back to eating so she slowly rolled her way from under all that weight and managed to get out from under the cubs without waking them up, and she went back to eating while they just dozed away.   We got some of the best views and photos of her at this point as they were now only about 100-150 feet away from us.  We watched her for a while and then decided it was time to go looking for the other mama bear that had been on the beach with her spring cubs.   There were a few other bears that had also come into the meadow by now, but the 3 little ones would make for better photos.

We found them pretty much where we’d last seen them. All hanging out on the beach.  The three little cubs were much more playful than the older three we’d been watching for hours and they were running around a bit and playing …. And as mama walked up the beach toward us they had to run to keep up with her.  We didn’t get to watch them up close nearly as long as the other group, but it was still fun to see the smaller cubs and watch how different they were when interacting with each other. 

They slowly moved away from us and now we could see the other three cubs finally wake up again after about an hour long nap.  We just sat on top of the berm and watched all the bear in the meadow for her for a while before deciding to call it a day and head back to the boat.  

The bear sightings weren’t over just year though as we crossed paths with one more bear as we walked down the beach.  This one was just sound asleep amongst the drift wood and we almost walked right past without even noticing it.  This one was pretty sleepy from the heat and when hearing us, barely had the energy to lift its head to look at us a couple of times and lay right back down to go back to sleep.

First view of the meadow after coming over the berm from the beach

First river we crossed and the view beyond

Another view of the meadow

First view of the mama bear and her three cubs we would watch for hours

Was so hot out, this cub needed to take a dip in the river to cool off

Three spring cubs tryin to keep up with their mama - you can see the heat shimmering

Cubs finally caught up to mama

Antarctica - Day 12 - Part 2

MONDAY, DECEMBER 9TH

We safely got out of the harbor and made our way to our next landing of the day at Paulet Island. While we were underway, lunch was served and it felt really good to be back in the warmth of the ship. I even had a couple of cups of hot chocolate to help warm me up.

Paulet is a circular island, about 1.0 mile in diameter, lying 3 miles SE of Dundee  Island, off
the NE end of the Antarctic Peninsula. Paulet is the site of an enormous Adélie penguin
colony. Paulet consists of a distinct volcanic cone, 1,158 feet high.

In February 1903  a stone hut was built in  by shipwreck  survivors from the Swedish Antarctic
Expedition led by Otto Nordenskiöld, together with the grave of an expedition member, and the cairn
built on the highest point of the island to draw the attention of rescuers, thankfully this story
ended well with the rescue of the totality of the crew by the  Argentinean  Corbeta  Uruguay.  In 
1972  this  hut  was  declared  Historic  Site  and Monument # 41 by the Antarctic Treaty System
(ATS).

This island has been identified as an Important Bird Area (IBA) because it supports a large
breeding colony of about 100,000 pairs of Adelié penguins.

Here are photos from the day, including a few that show just how many penguins there were here. They stretched on for as far as the eye could see. 

One funny story from the afternoon is that I was trapped on the beach for close to 20 minutes, I walked up on a group of penguins that were waiting to go into the water and stopped the 10 feet away as required and while I was there waiting for them to decide what to do, another group of penguins came out of the water directly behind me, and then they basically just stood around me preening and shaking the water off, and one even decided to lay down and take a bit of a nap.  Since I couldn't really move without breaking the rule on approaching them, I just took a knee on the beach and enjoyed watching them up close like that.  Other people seemed to get a kick out of me being stuck there as a few later told me they took photos of me trapped there.  LOL

Here is another collection of Penguin photos and a few Blue-Eyed Shags which also nested here and mixed in with the 100,000 penguins nicely.

We stayed on the island and watched the Penguins for a couple of hours and then it was time to start to head back to the ship.  Dinner tonight was at 19:00.

At 20:30 Monika, the expedition leader, gave an introduction on the “History of Whaling in Antarctica” in preparation at tomorrow´s landing at Deception Island.  The weather tonight didn't look like it was going to break enough for there to be any kind of beautiful sunset so I decided i would do my best to get some good sleep tonight for the first time in a week. 

Watching the ship pull into Deception Island tomorrow is supposed to be something to not miss, so I plan on being up early to set up the GoPro and film the whole thing is possible.

Weather Conditions
Wind (direction & force): South East | Light Breeze (4-6 Knots)
Weather & Sea: Clouded | Smooth

LAT. 63˚ 34.9’ S, LONG. 55˚ 46.3’ W

Antarctica - Day 8 - Part 1

THURSDAY, DECEMBER 5TH

There was a very early wake up call this morning.  At 4:00 am the wake up call came across the intercom to get everyone up and moving around and ready to make our second landing of the trip.  This morning's landing was in Mikkelsen Harbor, a small bay on the south side of Trinity Island between Skottsberg Point and Borge Point, in the Palmer Archipelago.

The weather conditions were actually pretty nice, with a small breeze (17-21Knots) and a Temperature:  of -3ºC | 26.6 ºF at the time of the Zodiac ride across the harbor.  The morning was beautiful and the sunrise that was still happening lit up the area all around us with the most beautiful light. If I hadn't already packed up all my gear into the dry bag, I would have been taking pictures like crazy.  I just hoped we would get to the land before the light went away!

The Zodiac ride over to the landing spot wasn't very long this morning and the water was much smoother than we had on the ride yesterday.  I don't think there were many big splashes this morning which made me regret not getting my camera out earlier but it's always better to be safe than sorry.  There are still way too many days of photography ahead to risk shorting my camera out now.

Here is a look back at the ship where you can still see the way the early morning light is just touching the mountains around us.

The following photo shows how beautiful the light was even more... I just wish the photo could also let you hear how quiet and peaceful it is here!  The penguins are even being quiet this morning compared to the loud group we saw yesterday. It's truly an amazing place.

The first, huge difference in today's landing is that today we have tons of snow and ice around us compared to that muddy mess we had to walk around in yesterday.  I have to say that the smell today isn't nearly as bad either which was a nice surprise. I think the snow really helps keep everything a little fresher.  I know I certainly enjoyed walking in the snow a lot more!

One of the first animals I saw was this Skua just laying in the snow near our landing site.  It didn't seem bothered at all by me as I got closer to take it's photo. It just laid there watching me. These are one of the biggest threats to Penguins on land, as they like to feed on Penguin eggs and chicks.  Maybe this one had already gotten its fill of eggs this morning.

There was also a seal nearby just lounging in the snow down by the water.  I waited and watched it for a while to see if it would move so I could get a better shot, but turns out... seals don't do much of anything once they find a spot to snooze.  I finally gave up and realized this would be the best photo of this seal I was going to get today.

 The penguins here are all taking advantage of the few places without snow, to build their nests and lay their eggs.  There were only a few spots on this island with bare land visible and most all of it was taken up the the mating pairs. I have to say, they sure have some amazing views from their chosen spots!

There would be these little rock outcrops here and there and on every one of them, you'd see a few more Penguins.  They don't seem to let much open ground go to waste this time of year.  Once again, this nest just has some amazing views. 

Another thing I've learned is that Penguins aren't the quietest creatures around.  They are constantly squawking and calling out. You can see one of them here doing it.  I think I was able to get some good video footage of them where you can hear what it sounds like. I'll have to post that later when I get a change to go through all my video footage. 

It was fun wandering around in the snow and just watching these few groups as they woke up to start their day.  They weren't nearly as active right now which made watching them easy, but made getting any kind of interesting photos a lot more difficult.

When it was time to head back to the ship, I just had to stop and take one last look around.  This entire bay is surrounded by amazing Mountains, with Glaciers and snow packs that have to be seen to be believed. I can't even explain the scale of how big these things are... but hopefully the photos can give you an idea.  Look at the way all of that snow and ice just goes right down to the water's edge!

Oh, and just for grins, here is a picture of TWO seals that joined the beach party .. and yep, they were just as exciting as the first fella I saw this morning.  I guess they are better at doing rock imitations than they are at looking like active animals.  :)

This post seems like it's getting pretty long so I'm going to break it into two parts.  Watch for part 2 later today :)