7-26-16 Pack Creek for Brown Bears

Cloudy with light rain almost all day.

Pack Creek is on Admiralty Island just south of Glacier Bay National Park

Mother with 2 cubs; one of the oldest Brownies, 30 years old, with a broken right hind leg that "healed" at an odd angle making it so she hobbles; great aerial acrobatics between eagles and eagles, as well as eagles and ravens, and ravens and ravens.

 Sum Dum Glacier

It's one of the glaciers on the cruise ship "tour"

It looks quite different in the daylight

Immature Common loon

Float planes bring people over from Juneau

Delphinus our home away from home

Fog can make flying an "iffy" situation

Admiralty Island lies in the heart, or northeastern part, of the archipelago that makes up Southeast Alaska.  It is protected from Pacific storms by Baranof and Chichagof Islands to the west and lies distant enough from the barrier of the Coast mountains to the east to be out of harm's way when coastal and interior systems collide.  It rained then entire time we were on the island at Pack Creek watching the bears.  Pack Creek drains a watershed of Admiralty Island into Seymour Canal.  Admiralty is not only part of the Tongass National Forest (1907), but is also a National Monument (1978). 3 1/2 year old male

Named "Rufus" by the rangers.  He was kicked out by his mother as expected.

 He catches a whiff of another bear which turns out to be a 2 year old female (named Ruby) who was abandoned by his mother for unknown reasons.  The rangers didn't think she would make it through the winter but she did fine.



These two went at each other "play-fighting" for over an hour!

It didn't look like "play"-fighting but  they're just practicing for when it counts as they get older.

 After an hour or so looking like they were trying to kill each other, they simply stopped and ambled together into the forest.

At low tide the bears are looking for anything to eat in the intertidal zone (clams, mussels, starfish, sea cucumbers, etc)

Devil's Club has berries that the bears love

Here Mom is showing her cubs how to pull down the leaves to get to those tasty berries

Mom caught a salmon and brought it to the cubs

Mom and the "Kids"

Bonaparte's Gull in non-breeding plumage

Bonaparte's Gull in breeding plumage with the dark head feathers

Signs to make you smile

On an Electrician's truck:
"Let us remove your shorts."