During the night the elk make their way out from the trees to the open grasslands in Waterton. These two females where heading back into the forest as the sun was rising. Sunrise and sunset are the best times to see the elk.
Category: Mammals
While this looks like a fierce battle it was actually a mother grizzly wrestling with her 3-4 year old cub. Eventually the mother will drive her cub off as she gets ready to give birth to the next litter.
Thousands of these barnacles line the rocks along the beaches of the Pacific Rim National Park
In Waterton the bison are kept in a large paddock. This year there are three calves increasing the herd size to 14 animals.
These fawns, with their bright blue eyes were in the Waterton townsite where many mule deer are found. By staying near the town the deer have access to lots of green grass and are less likely to be predated on.
This is an ochre starfish, which will hang out beneath the mussels until the tide comes back in and then climb up and start feeding on them. Not a bad life eating mussels everyday if you ask me.
Our guide had positioned the zodiac several hundred meters in front of a group of killer whales and turned the engine off. We waited several minutes and were just about to leave when this orca surfaced right in front of the boat and swam underneath us.
With a week left of holidays I decided to head out to the west coast. I headed over to Vancouver Island and went down to Victoria as I had heard from a friend that the killer whales were in the area. There are 3 groups of resident killer whales in this area totally about 95 animals and they feed exclusively on fish, specifically salmon. Transient killer whales, which I didn’t see, roam up and down the coast in small groups or as individuals and feed on marine mammals, mainly seals.
This beaver was not happy that I was sitting on top of it’s lodge and made sure that everyone else new that I was there. After several tail slaps it dove under the water and swam back into the lodge. Over the next few days they became used to me and decided that I wasn’t worth the effort.
A beautiful cinnamon black bear cub who is the sibling of the black bear cub I posted a picture of on June 15th. This one was much more timid and took a lot of coaxing from the other cub to get it to come down from the tree and run deeper into the forest. Black bears can have offspring that are either black, cinnamon (brown) or even white (aka, spirit bears in British Columbia).
I came across this mother and her calf along the shore of a lake. The calf, no bigger than the mom’s head must have been born that night as it was still unstable on it’s feet and had a very hard time walking through the tall grass. The mother would try to call and lead the calf away but the calf was still not strong enough to follow. I left after a short time and returned to the same spot later that afternoon but they had moved off into the forest.
Owen Slater Photography 