Sunday Nature Stills – 01/19/2020

After traveling for almost two months, we took a break and camped for a week on the bank of a small glacial pond on the Kenai Peninsula of Alaska.  It was a beautiful spot with dynamic weather and lots of rain.  It was nice to have the time to watch the activity of the wildlife in the area.  This is a female Barrow’s Goldeneye that was very protective of the pond.  The duck couple was nesting along the banks of the pond and were on alert the whole time we were there.  The day before I took this photograph, we watched this female make a huge fuss at a moose that was getting too close to her ducklings.  Sometimes it’s nice to spend an extended time in one place.

Sunday Nature Stills – 01/12/2020

This is a large grizzly bear that I photographed catching salmon near Hyder, Alaska.  During the salmon run, the water is completely full of fish.  Many steams and small rivers have several types of salmon spawning at the same time, and it’s interesting to watch how selective the bears are in picking what salmon they want to catch.  We spent over an hour watching this particular bear.  The salmon in this area can reach 40-70 lb.  It was pretty impressive to see how easily this bear could catch salmon that weighed 50 lb or more.