So Many Great Polar Bear Encounters!
Another spectacular season in Canada’s great white north. The polar bear encounters this year were world-class and consistent throughout the season. We ran three week-long back to back tours from late October until mid November with great encounters on all trips.
The Changing Seasons
Although the bear encounters were fantastic throughout the season, each trip had its own special flavour. Our first trip had less snow with more sunshine and rich fall colours. It was also significantly more comfortable than later when the temperature began to plummet!
Late October also has longer days so we had more time to enjoy the bears as they wandered through the tundra and taiga (boreal forest) in search of anything to line their bellies before the big freeze when they could finally go out to hunt.
Healthy Moms and Cubs
There were lots of healthy moms and cubs around this season, which was great to see. In Hudson Bay, Polar Bear mothers give birth in the winter and nurse their cubs inside their dens until they emerge in March or April. Then they have a short spring window to head out onto the ice to hunt before the thaw in June. It’s amazing that they manage to gain enough body weight in that short time to sustain them and their cub(s) for the entire summer and fall, yet somehow they get by; at least for now.
Polar Bear Twins
It’s not uncommon to find a few moms with two cubs. On rare occasions you may even see triplets, but its unlikely that all of them will make it to adulthood. This mom with two little fur balls looked to be doing just fine as they moved over the frozen shoreline.
Play Fighting
Polar Bears are natural brawlers. The ability to fight off intruders or assert mating dominance is a life or death skill that is taught by mom from an early age. Some cubs are born boisterous, but others need a little encouragement from mom, like this little guy in this video. Super cute!
Sibling Rivalry among Polar Bears
Once polar bears reach three years of age, their mothers break the bond and drive them away so that they can mate again. Adolescent bears sometimes strike up friendships with similar sized bears. When food is nearby (in this case just smelly kelp scraps under the snow), this can lead to aggressive interactions like this one:
Sparring Polar Bears
We also got to watch two adult polar bears sparring for dominance; a fight between sumos that continued for hours! It’s interesting to see how playing with mom and then teenage quarrelling eventually leads to the skills necessary for these heavyweights to spar for supremacy. The winners of fights like these will likely become the dominant males that go on to mate; strengthening the polar bear gene pool.
Photographing Behemoth Polar Bears
Adult Polar Bears are naturally solitary animals, so many of our encounters were with large solo bears as they pawed their way across the Hudson Bay landscape. If you want to convey the sheer bulk of big bears, is to photograph them while actually standing on the tundra rather than looking down from a high-sided tundra vehicle. Better still, lay down in the snow so that you’re actually looking up at the bears. These dynamic views can only be captured in a small group setting which is why we travel in 4WD vans so that we can quickly get into the right position for the light and the bear’s direction of travel, jump out onto the snow for the perfect shot, and then quickly reposition for the next shooting opportunity. Even the non-photographers in our groups appreciate this process because it also offers the best vantages for simply enjoying the visual spectacle of the bears in their environment.
Lodge Bears
Another aspect that sets our trips apart from the competition is that we stay at White Whale Lodge; the only lodge in the Churchill area that is outside town in the middle of the open tundra where we get regular visits from passing polar bears!
The Big Freeze
The ocean finally froze over on November 26th; a week or so after our final group had left. As soon as the freeze occurred, most of the bears moved north, following the expansion of the ice. For a couple of days we could see them on the edge of visibility, moving along the floe edge where they were finally able to hunt for seals.
Join our VIP Polar Bear Photography Adventure
The Polar Bears will stay out on the ice until it becomes unstable in early June, then they will swim back to shore and lay low until the next polar bear migration begins in October. Join us then for one of the greatest spectacle in the natural world: Join our VIP Polar Bear Photography Tour
