Tue, July 18, 2017

Viewing the black bears at Anan is awesome as the park service has done a great job of building an observation deck and blind.

Here’s a sow with her cub and they were only about 20 ft away.  That rail is part of the observatory deck.

And a close up of the cub.

The main attraction was watching the bears fishing for the salmon. Some of the older ones were really good and could catch one within a minute. Others, especially the juveniles, had a much harder time and could take 15 min or more.

Here’s one of those juveniles fishing in fast moving waters. You can just see the frustration as (s)he would swipe at the fish.

And success. Sushi doesn’t get any fresher than this 🙂

Because of so many bears along the shoreline, the bears would take their fish up the trail to get away from other bears. This particular bear was kind to us as (s)he decided to eat about 8 ft from the rail. Nice.  Notice the ever-present raven in the background?

Brown bears (grizzlies) rule but for whatever reason, they don’t feed here otherwise they’d boot the black bears. But these two juveniles, likely just kicked out by their mom, made a cameo appearance.  And then turned around when they saw all of the black bears.