Last week I published the general wildlife and landscape photos from my autumn trip to the Great Bear Rainforest. This week, it time for the main attraction: bears!
Most folks who travel to this beautiful part of British Columbia come for bears. The GBR lives up to its name. Not only is it the only place on earth where spirit bears are found, but grizzly bears and black bears are also abundant. During this trip, my groups were fortunate to see spirit bears (even on the non-bear-oriented tour), and we had some marvelous grizzly bear viewing in one of the inlets where salmon were spawning.
View the full Great Bear Rainforest 2016 Bears gallery here. A short preview is below.
The spirit or Kermode bear is a subspecies of black bear occasionally born with white fur. It is only found in a small area of British Columbia.
A spirit bear feasts on a salmon carcass. Bears take advantage of the spawning season to hunt for or scavenge tired or dead salmon.
Without a doubt, the spirit bear is one of the most beautiful animals in North America.
We were fortunate to spend time with several grizzly bears during the salmon spawn in British Columbia.
Grizzlies scour the shores and wade or swim in inlets and rivers looking for salmon carcasses.
This pair of grizzly bears provided hours of entertainment.
One bear would follow the other, and was often rebuffed with a smack to the face.
It’s possible this could be a future courting pair, or perhaps they were siblings.
They went at it for hours, wrestling and biting, playfully at times, in chest-high water.
This was one of the best wildlife encounters I’ve ever had in the Great Bear Rainforest.
View the full Great Bear Rainforest 2016 Bears gallery here. And remember, you can order prints of nearly any image in the photo archive.
If you are interested in joining me on a Great Bear Rainforest adventure in 2017, we have two spots left on a trip that needs to be filled by December 1 (the trip itself is next September). Learn more about this extended tour here.
