Alaska-Lake Clark National Park continued

After yesterday's windy and stormy day, Saturday arrived with a nice sunrise here at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge. I went out again and captured the sunrise and other photographers photographing it.
I also created a panoramic of the sunrise.
After breakfast, we traveled to Johnson River to see if we could find any bears there. No there were not any bears which was very unusual, however, found a nice Bald Eagle and some scenics to photograph.


Rest



"I caught a fish"



"Nothing like fresh salmon"



looking for more fish but would not drop the one it had

Bear Fight

We came back to the mouth of the Silver Salmon Creek where we again photographed the bears in various activities.
Here is a group of photographers photographing the bears.
I have taken a picture of a gull which while I was out doing the photography thought it was a Herring gull. On processing the picture, the gull turned out to have a completely black bill and no black on the tail feathers or the wings. After looking at my bird guides I believe this was a glaucous-winged gull, which I caught with his mouth wide open.

Sow with yearling cub

We finished up the day further inland on the Creek and obtain photographs of a bear in the grass and a different Sow Bear and its yearling cub.
Tomorrow, we will be flying out to return to Anchorage and our flights home, but if the weather is nice, will get up early and photograph the sunrise.

Brown Bears and More Brown Bears

Our days at Silver Salmon Creek Lodge are governed by the tides, the high tides do not allow you to get onto the beach. As I had written previously on August 31 we had the highest tide of the year at 22.3 feet, which occurred at 5:45 PM and each day it got later by at least an hour although tides were decreasing in size they still prevented us from getting out especially for evening shoots.
Today, we photographed bears and more bears. We were all photographing despite it being raining at extremely heavy winds with some gale force winds present. We definitely had to hold on to our equipment to keep it from being blown over.
Because of confusion surrounding the difference in coastal brown bears and grizzly bears and that some people think that they are entirely different species, here is some information from the Wikipedia.
“The brown bear (Ursus arctos) is a large bear distributed across much of northern Eurasia and North America. It can weigh from 300 to 780 kilograms (660 to 1,700 lb.) .
There are several recognized subspecies within the brown bear species. In North America, two types are generally recognized; the coastal brown bear and the inland grizzly, and the two types could broadly define all brown bear subspecies. Grizzlies weigh as little as 350 lb. (159 kg) in Yukon, while a brown bear, living on a steady, nutritious diet of spawning salmon , from coastal Alaska and Russia can weigh 1,500 lb. (682 kg).”
People also wonder how you can tell a brown bear from a black bear and one of the ways is to look at the shoulder area: In profile, the brown bear has a distinct shoulder hump. This is due to large muscles necessary for digging roots, tubers and ground squirrels. Black bears lack the shoulder hump of the brown bear.


We photographed all different types of activity including the bears resting, fishing, fighting, cubs play fighting.

Cubs Resting

Bear Chasing Bear

Looking for Fish

Ah that felt Good

I am Tired

Cubs Play Fighting

Sow and Cub

In the Meadow



Looking for Fish



Chasing Fish

Sliding down the Muddy Bank

Coming Toward You

Sow and Cub

Coastal Brown Bears and Puffins

After a good nights sleep, I woke up well was still dark out and found that I had no electricity in the room. Come to find out the lodges electricity comes from a generator and from solar and they charge excess into the storage batteries. Depending on how much activity there is in the evening after they shut off the generator once the batteries are on empty electricity is shut off and there is an innate to love next morning when the generator is restarted.

As a groove light out I look outside my window and saw that it was going to be a nice day with a nice sunrise, so I grabbed my camera with my 18 to 105 lens and went upstairs to the kitchen and dining room area, grabbed a cup of coffee, and went on to the porch to take pictures of the sunrise.

 

After a delicious breakfast, gathering up our equipment, we went out to find and photograph the bears. There was a multitude of activity including bears catching fish, fighting, cubs eating and playing.

A bald eagle flew over the beach and landed and started to eat a salmon that was left, until one of the bears decided to go over and take the salmon back.

while we were photographing the bears , we also observed planes coming in from Anchorage bringing another group to the lodge. actually this group was supposed to come in yesterday, but because of the weather they couldn't fly out.

After lunch we photographed the bears until around 4 PM, when we boarded the boat to take a trip to photograph puffins at "Puffin Island". Normally you could land on the island but because of the surf this was impossible. Traveling around the backside of the island made the water much, but there was still rough seas hitting the rocks, so we did all our photography from the boat.

Besides the puffins, there were Double-Crested Cormorants, Murre's and Herring Gulls present.

Looking toward the shoreline, there was a excellent view of the Redoubt Volcano, which is one of the two active volcanoes in Lake Clark National Park.

We returned back to the lodge in time for supper. After which we rested and talked, downloaded pictures and finished up another day in Alaska