Vegetarian bears strut their stuff

Black bear feeding on catkins in an aspen tree

Last week, I (Joel) was lucky enough to get the chance to go to Jasper to teach an interpretation course.  On the way up the beautiful Icefields Parkway – Highway 93N – I saw both black and grizzly bears feeding on early season spring food.

First up was a black bear, perched atop a slender aspen tree.  It was feeding on the catkins, or clusters of flowers, that hang down from the ends of the branches.  It's dicey work, because bears are heavy, and aspen branches are skinny.  While I watched, the bear put too much weight on one branch, and broke it right off.  The bear made a nice recovery, but it was definitely moving verrrry carefully.

Pair of grizzly bears feeding on "mystery" plants

Farther north, a pair of grizzlies, maybe a female with a three or four year old cub, had their heads down, grazing on something sprouting along the roadside.  I couldn't get a good look at what they were so focussed on, so I took some photos and a quick video and then left them in peace.  Coming back the next day, however, I stopped at the same spot and took a closer look – the mystery food was a mini forest of sprouting horsetails.  These are primitive plants related to ferns, and bears relish them in the spring.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsvYkf489ao

The "mystery" plants revealed.  They are young horsetails, just sprouted.

Enjoy the photos and the video footage.  It's always a real treat to be able to safely observe bears and see what fills their stomachs.

Carnivores Sink their Teeth into the Ecosystem

We like to keep up with the ecology research done in western North America, to understand the "big picture" in national parks like Banff and Yellowstone.

One of the biologists we like to follow is William Ripple, from the University of Oregon.  He has just published a paper on the effect that predators have on herbivores.  His research shows that areas that are missing their key predators  – like wolves – have populations of deer, elk and moose that far exceed what would be normal.  These grazers then damage plant communities, sometimes making them much poorer than what came before.

Read more about what we've nicknamed “the Ripple Effect.”

Spring into Winter

Today marks the first official day of spring.

But not in Lake Louise. Our March came in like a lion, and does not look like it will go out like a lamb. While snowshoeing this past weekend near the lake, we measured the snow to be almost 160 cm deep!

This deep snow is wonderful for skiers and snowshoe-ers, but it does present problems for animals who don’t come equipped with big feet. In Waterton Lakes National Park, in the southern part of the Canadian Rockies, one of the park’s remote wildlife cameras recently captured this image of a female mule deer trying to get from point A to point B.

We almost never see deer tracks in the deep snow environments where we snowshoe, and you can see why: it's too much work for heavy animals with small feet. Instead, elk and deer in the Canadian Rockies do small scale migrations, moving into the low valleys or eastern foothills for winter – places with much lower snowpacks. Obviously, this deer missed that lesson.

With all the snow, we are extending our snowshoeing season through the first week of April. If you'd like to spring into winter, give us a call.

A Swift Migration

We're big mystery fans, and when mystery collides with nature, we get very interested. Last week, a birding friend of ours sent us the abstract for a soon to be published article about one of the most mysterious birds in the Rockies – the black swift.  This bird looks like a souped-up swallow, and nests in a smattering of canyons throughout western North America.  Here in Banff National Park, you can see their mossy cup nests in rock pockets in Johnston Canyon.

Swifts eat insects on the wing, so they must migrate to warmer climates every fall. The mystery has to do with where they spend the winter, because they've never been observed in the winter months.  That's right, never!  The black swift is the last North American bird species to have its wintering grounds remain unknown.

Winter habitat in the Amazon rainforest

But no more: researchers in Colorado, using primitive little geolocators attached to a handful of swifts, have figured out where they go. Their winter destination: Brazil.  The swifts from the Colorado Rockies fly 7000 km to the Amazonian rainforest in western Brazil in September and October, and then return to the Rockies in May or June. The geolocators indicate they average between 300 & 400 km per day during migration.

The same research has not been done on swifts in the Canadian Rockies, so who knows if our swifts winter in the same place as their Colorado brethren, but if they do, that would add about 2000 km to the trip!

So we have a mystery solved, but a sense of wonder enhanced.  If you'd like to get a fuller account of the story, try this wonderful post at the earbirding blog:

http://earbirding.com/blog/archives/3602

Where's Waldo? – the Winter Edition

The winter snowpack is a great canvas for recording tracks, and over the years we've seen lots of footprints.  Usually they're left by common species like red squirrels, pine martens and snowshoe hares, but sometimes we see more unusual tracks from wolverines, porcupines or moose.

Finding the animals that left the tracks, however, is harder.  It might be because they're long gone, or it might be because they are “one with nature.”  That's certainly true of snowshoe hares.  Their winter coat is snow white, and they have mastered the art of blending in.

Every once in a while, though, we get lucky.  Last year, on a snowshoe trip with Peter L. from Toronto, we spied a hare sitting motionless in the woods.  We received photos of that trip from Peter last week, and when we opened them, we wondered, “why did he include these shots of a snowy patch of forest?”  Then we had our “ah-ha” moment.  It's like a “Where's Waldo” book, with the role of Waldo being played by the hare.  Have fun finding it!

Let Sleeping Bears Lie

On our snowshoeing trips, we are often asked, “do you ever find hibernating bears when you snowshoe?” And our answer is always “never.” It would be like finding a needle in a haystack: the rough guess from Parks Canada is that Banff is home to between 120 – 140 bears in total (that's black and grizzly). The park is almost 7,000 km2, so that's one hibernating bear for every 50 km2!

In the world of bears, however, you should never say “never.” A week and a half ago, a biologist friend of ours, Karsten Heuer, was out backcountry skiing with some friends along the Icefields Parkway, north of Lake Louise. They were skiing through the forest when they stumbled upon a sleeping black bear. It was tucked into a tree-well, right on top of the snow, which surprised everyone. Black bears normally find shelter in stumps or logs. Since they hibernate with a relatively high body temperature, the conventional wisdom is that insulation and shelter make it easier for them to conserve their body heat.

Karsten told us that the bear was curled up like a sleeping dog, and that when they came close, it lifted its head in a really groggy way. It dropped its head back down, as if to say, “can I just sleep for another few months?”, but then it lifted its head more alertly. That was the cue for the skiers to vacate the area and leave the bear in peace.

One of Karsten's friends, biologist and professional photographer Dan Rafla, was in the group, and he managed to squeeze off a quick shot as they skied away. Dan (www.danrafla.com) has generously allowed to use his photo, a rare image of an even rarer event.

If you're visiting Banff through this winter season, Dan will be presenting his show, “Wildlife in the Rockies” at Buffalo Mountain Lodge twice a month until the end of March. Check this link for details:
http://www.crmr.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Buffalo-Mountain-Lodge-Heritage-Tourism-Talks-Information.pdf

A beautiful Smilebox for us

Many thanks to Liz and Chris for making this Smilebox slide show of our snowshoe together!  Looks like they had a good time and so did Nadine.  

What a pleasure to be out in the snow during the holiday season.

Free digital slideshow made with Smilebox