27 June

As I promised Roger for his birthday, we took Alaskan Bear Adventures for an hour long flight out to Katmai National Park to see the brown bears.  The plane was a 6 seater Cessna 206, so it was our pilot and 5 passengers.  Three planes went and we were weight loaded.  I got delegated to the back row and Roger was in the middle where he had the most leg room.  Actually he spent the hour with his elbows on his knees.  I spent the hour wishing I had a booster seat, because it was hard for me to see out of the window.  Regardless it was a picturesque flight.  I’ve opted to only post two picture, during the flight Homer Spit above and a cool snow back below.

You’ll have to bear with me, but we saw a lot of cool bear stuff today.  The first bear we saw was a young male.  (When there's a circular shot, I'm taking the picture through one side of my binoculars.)

The second set was a sow and her cub.  Cubs stay with momma bear until they are 4 years old and then they get the boot.  Usually they’re born in pairs, and the survival rate to breeding maturity is about 25%.  Bear cubs can become victims of larger predatory bears, poor feeding, or drowning.  Once bears learn to swim, they are excellent swimmers.   

Our pilot/guide Mike said that there are about 3500 brown bears in the park.  About 10% of the population grazes in the meadow we were in.  Bears are omnivores and seasonally eat what is available.   Right now there’s oysters and grass.  Goose grass is their favorite grass, since it has 15% protein content when compared to the other grasses.  Bear scat also changes when their diet changes.  It currently resembles horse manure, due to grass consumption.  Later on in the year when fish and berries become available bears gain more weight due to the higher protein content in fish and sugar content in the berries.  Bears generally aren’t fast movers unless threatened or when a female is trying to avoid a randy male.  (Note the last of the trio of above pictures was taken without the binocular method.  This guy came about 25 yards close to us.)

We saw bears eating, sunning, sitting, frolicking, swimming, and mating.  So if you’re offended by any of these bear activities, don’t look at the pictures.

When we got back, we stopped at the local Quilt Shop because we saw it.  Not that we had to go out of the way. 

 Afterwards we then to the Wildlife ocean visitors information center, which had a very interesting movie about sandhill cranes.  This variety of crane nests in Homer.  Their young stay with their parents for 1 year.  Then once the parents migrate back to their nesting site, the young is chased away.  Generally only 1 of the 2 chicks hatch survives the first year.

Tomorrow we'll be leaving the Kenai Peninsula and heading towards eastern Alaska.  I asked our guide about seeing bears eat salmon and was told, it all depends upon whether or not the salmon are running.  We've seen the local news and apparently this year is a bad year for all types of salmon.  Marine biologists don't know why, but it just is.  Right now a lot of the tourist fishing rivers are closed only to subsistance fishing (meaning that only native Alaskans can fish.)  One opinion I heard was perhaps it is the result of the tsunami of March 2011.  There's no good explanation.  The closing of tourist and commercial fishing in certain rivers is to provide the wildlife a fighting chance to get the fish they need.