Cub on a log

A black bear cub finishing up the last scraps of a Kokanee salmon on a log alongside of Taylor Creek. This was one of the few frames where I was able to get some of the autumn color behind the bears as well.

Stilted reflection

I have a bunch more bear images sitting in the queue, but I thought I'd go with something of a more typical variety for my blog this Monday morning to mix things up a bit. Here's a lovely black-necked stilt walking through the shallows of Shollenberger Park in Petaluma. I just love to see these birds, and I think they are especially striking in photographs with their starkly contrasting plumage. With the very shallow water along the edges of the pond, this frame really shows off the wonderfully long legs of this species. In fact, they have the second longest legs of any species relative to their body size, with only the flamingo being longer.

Stalking salmon, Black bear cub in Taylor Creek

It was really fun to watch this playful cub bounce around the creek while his mother was focused on consuming as much salmon as possible. However, we did see the cub catch a few fish on his own which he would grab and then run to the other side of the creek to eat it away from the stream. Perhaps he's had a few get away from him before, and knows they are easier to keep track of on land. This is about as serious as we saw the cub, where you can tell he was intent on watching where the salmon were moving in the stream ahead of him. In the end though, he decided this was not the right place to catch a meal.

View more photographs of black bears.

Cub along the fence

This cute little black bear cub belongs to the mother bear from my previous posts. It was really fun to watch him bound around the creek side, and he even caught a few salmon for himself. In this shot he's taking a quick break from chasing the fish to see what was happening upstream of the salmon fence.

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!