One item on my bucket list is represented by this series of photos from Mike Iyvers, taken as the bears plunder the salmon run at Brooks Falls, Katmai National Park, Alaska. They’re.fattening themselves (and their cubs) up for the winter hibernation. I MUST get there some day. Mike’s captions are indented, and you can enlarge his photos by clicking in them.
Here are some wildlife photos taken at Brooks Falls in Katmai National Park during the July salmon run some years ago. The first batch shows an overview of brown bears at Brooks Falls going after the salmon leaping up the falls, an amazing double catch, and a big fat bear with his prize. More to come.
The first one in this batch shows a brown bear mother with her cubs. The second shows a wolf looking for scraps from the bears. The third shows two bears fighting – bears are not social animals so having so many concentrated in a small area inevitably leads to conflict, sometimes bloody. The fourth shows the mother and cubs in the river finding leftovers from the big males who catch the salmon. The last pic of this batch shows a perfect catch.
Here is the last batch – I’ve got literally hundreds of photos like these so these are just a representative selection. The first one in this batch shows a cute fluffy cub. The last three are in sequence: a salmon leaps right between two aggressive bears, leading one to attack the other but he loses his footing and goes over the falls! Humiliated, this bear then emerges from beneath the water at the base of the falls to attack another bear in frustration. It was pretty funny because the bear that went over the falls was the nastiest of the lot – I’m sure the other bears were quite amused to see this.
This one shows three cubs – one of which is watching me while the other two watch their mom fishing for salmon. Cute!
