Leftovers

A black bear finishing up a freshly caught Kokanee salmon. Early on in the encounter, she must have been fairly hungry since she ate just about every part of the fish but the tail. But by the end of her visit to the creek, she was being much more selective about the parts of the fish she wanted to consume.



You might have noticed the metal fence behind her, which crossed the length of the stream. This was put in place by the Department of Fish & Game to keep most of the salmon in the lower part of the stream in order to facilitate the collection of eggs for hatchery use. This created quite a concentration of salmon right at the gate, and the local bears definitely figured that out!


Here's a "making of" shot for this image sequence, courtesy of my wife. We were up on a stream bank (along with many other people watching the bear) and were remarkably close. In any other situation it would have felt too close, however, it was clear from the relaxed behavior of this bear that she was only interested in the fish, and she barely paid attention to the throngs of people watching along the shore.



And since this shot clearly shows my baseball allegiance, I'll sneak in a "Let's Go Giants!!" -- we're up 2-1 in the NLCS!

Salmon & Bears in Taylor Creek

There are times when you witness wildlife and it more or less leaves you breathless. Our encounter with the black bears feeding on Kokanee Salmon in Taylor Creek this weekend was one of them. Thanks to some great shots posted by Tory Kallman and John Wall, I knew this was an opportunity that was just too cool to pass up a chance at seeing.

We arrived in the area on Saturday afternoon, and spent the rest of the day sitting along the creekside hoping for the bears to appear. Unfortunately, there were no sightings to be had, and instead we were just left with the smell of many dead salmon wafting through the air. To make it worse, the rangers mentioned that the bears hadn't shown up in a few days, and we started to wonder if we had picked the wrong weekend to come or had missed the chance to see them altogether. With heavy rain showers in the forecast for Sunday we were resigned to enjoying the many other features of this area and figured that a day spent chasing landscapes and autumn colors would suffice.

However, we just had to make a quick trip back to the creek before setting off on a trip around the lake on Sunday morning. And just by chance, within 15 minutes of parking and watching the salmon, there was some excited activity up along the road. The bears were back, and soon enough they made there way to the creek and really put on a show!

Here are two shots of the mother bear with a male Kokanee salmon that she pulled from the stream. I have a lot of sorting and processing to do, but there will certainly be more bears in the future of this blog!

Almost time to relax

Its Friday morning, which means the weekend is nearly here and its almost time to relax. Lying out in the autumn sunshine like this Olympic marmot certainly sounds nice. Here's to hoping that you have an enjoyable and relaxing weekend! Taken in the Obstruction Pass area of Olympic National Park in September.

Preening scene

Sanderlings in a group preening session along Limantour Spit in Point Reyes National Seashore.

Like mother, like pup

A highlight of our August trip to MacKerricher State Park on the Mendocino coast was the harbor seals that hauled out on the rocks that were just offshore. This provided a great opportunity to observe them at relatively close range, and since there was water between the beach and their rocks, they were at ease when a group of onlookers stopped by.



We saw a handful of young pups in the group, some of which were playing in the water, and some like this one were hauled out on the rocks. Based on the struggles we saw of other pups trying to get out of the water, I'm not quite sure how this little guy made it all the way to the top. But kudos to him, and perhaps some encouraging pushes from his mother were in order.



I found the diversity of coloration and patterns on the seals to be quite interesting, and my personal favorite were those with the really dark colors like this mother. Perhaps her cute pup will one day grow up to look just like her!