The best way of predicting where the minke whales would surface was by watching the herring gulls. The gulls, initially circling above, would spot concentrations of krill, land and start feeding just before a whale would explode through the water surface and gulp down as many of the invertebrates as they could. The gulls would quickly have to get out of the way or risk being collateral damage from the feeding whales!
Most wildlife I see outside the national parks almost always runs off into the forest to get a safe distance away from people. Coyotes are no exception. They are incredibly smart, and so adaptive that some have learned to live exclusively in major cities preying on urban wildlife (and the occasional cat or dog). Efforts to rid them from the country side have failed and in fact it usually results in the coyotes adapting to the point that their numbers increase. This lone coyote was sleeping on the shoulder of the road. I slowly approached then stopped my car and turned off the engine. The coyote continued to sit on the road but eventually got up, stretched and yawned and then proceeded to howl. It did this several times, but without getting a response back, it slowly wandered off in search of some unsuspecting ground squirrels.
One of my favorite photos from the trip. This little black bear was the last to cross the road after it’s mother and sibling had already made it across. Instead of running into the forest, as soon as it crossed the road it stopped behind the daisies until the mother came back, licked it’s face, made sure that I wasn’t too close and then they wandered off to eat.
This is the sibling of the cub in the first photo. The mother kept them in the same area near the Waterton town site for several days so I was able to follow them from a safe distance for some time to get these photos. At one point this cub chased a squirrel up and around a tree.
With the mother already across the road she went up on her back legs to check to see that her cubs were following. This black bear has her territory surrounding the Waterton townsite and over the course of two days I saw her wandering past the information centre, Prince of Whales hotel and Linnet Lake and she never once approached people despite numerous people getting too close to her on foot.
This adult female elk stood out like a sore thumb in the rest of the elk herd but obviously she has survived despite this variation in colour, although she was slightly thinner than the rest of the herd as evident by her prominent spine. Sometimes white discolouration of animals can be caused by parasites, disease or wounds but these problems usually only effect a small portion of the fur. This elk didn’t appear to have any of those and therefore the most likely cause is genetic. If you search the web there are numerous pictures of white elk and piebald deer but it appears calico or piebald elk are not that common and I have yet to see another photograph of one. Please share if you have!
Just like clockwork it took all of 5 minutes of sitting along Akamina lake before I heard an animal moving through the forest on the opposite side of the lake and this moose appeared along the water’s edge. She moved around the lake towards me feeding along the way. Once she finally figured out that I was there she only briefly looked at me before going back to feeding on the plants around the lake.
Owen Slater Photography 