Bears, birds and beauty

 

We have been so lucky with the weather so far!  Woke up to another mild and sunny day, so the guides decided that it would be good to spend the entire day in the sub arctic wilderness, and have a picnic in a place even more remote than the lodge - which is a very high bar!

 I got up just in time to see the sunrise, and said Hi to our local black bear

(he comes every time the smells  food waft from the kitchen.  He is clearly a very discriminating bear, since the food is here is indeed very good).

We got on our rhinos by 9::30am and off we went, about 12 miles in the wilderness to look for bears, and just enjoy the views! 
Joe was ready!!! We quickly saw a mommy and cub.  We got a good look and followed them for a bit, but they were skittish and decided to go and hide in the willow bushes.  

From my very limited experience, polar bears are not nearly as scary as we were led to believe:  They seem to have very little interest in eating us, and indeed are more scared of us.  This time of the year, they are in a state called "walking hibernation": Polar bears do not in fact hibernate:  but they only feed when there is ice (and seals arrive)- which means that from mid August to mid/end October, they don’t eat at all.  They just hang out and wait for the ice to form, trying to save their energy.  So they are not up for a fight, and would rather just be left alone.  The mom and cub if anything are more cautious, so we did not get too close.  Still, wonderful sight! 

We continued on, though the barren and grand landscape- and muddy too!  at one point one of our rhinos got stuck in the mud, but - no problem- that's why we have two of them, and we just pulled it out and went on.

 

We then drove to our lunch spot by a river.  It is so quiet out there!  And so beautiful and barren at the same time.  Lunch was really good too! 

   We 

There was definite signs of bear activity at our lunch spot.....  but they stayed away

 

Little wading birds called Greater Yellow Legs kept us company.  Again, there were may other birds, including peregrine falcons, eagles, harrier hawks and savannah sparrows.  Plus tons of varied geese.  But since the yellow legs kept us company during lunch, they are the ones being featured today!

After lunch, we drove back and parked by the bay for a walk on the beach and looked for fossils.  

That beach was so beautiful!  Hudson Bay is very shallow, making low tide very interesting.  I did find some interesting fossils and rocks.

As we got closer to the lodge, it started raining.  First time since we got here.  I have to say that riding on the rhino is not as pleasant in the rain.  Can you tell that Joe is having fun?? 

But before the rain, the sky was so beautiful that it was worth getting a bit wet.

Another delicious dinner at the lodge  It's 9:30pm and I'm ready for bed.....

Of bears, “rhinos”, and lights….. And berry eating wolves???

  `                                   

        

-                

                                We were awoken at 4:15 am because the northern lights were up, and the team here had made it clear that if anything exciting happens, they will wake us up!  And so they did.  These were the white type of lights, looking like great drapes across the sky.  The sky itself is amazing with no light pollution at all, you can really see so many stars.  Before going to bed, I had indeed spent some time admiring the Milky Way.

 We went back to bed, but not for long, because at 7:00am, they woke us up again, because a polar bear was nearby, and they wanted to go out right away, before breakfast, to see if we could get near.  But he went out for a swim before we could catch up, so breakfast happened, and then we went back out to try to find him again.  We did catch up we him:  he had come out of the water and was sunning himself on the shore.   We approached him on foot hoping to get within about 100 yards of him.  But we must look like a scary bunch to him because he just moved away again.  (So go some pictures, but not great ones).

So back on our “rhinos” (as our trucks are known) we went and were going to follow him again but - just as I was thinking that these machines could go through anything- one of them just refused to start!   Since we are a small group, we managed to get back to the lodge on the remaining one, and the team went back during lunch to fix it.

Along the way, we saw many foot prints in the mud.  Below is a wolf’s.  These can stay for years in the mud.  I guess it’s how fossils are eventually made….

After another very nice lunch, and after our guides managed to fix our rhino, we went back and tracked the 4 wolf pups again.  

We found them gorging themselves with berries in a gooseberry patch!  (Who knew!  Certainly not me…..).  They entertained us with their antics and we followed them for a long time.   They call each other, and play with each other and are very inquisitive:  They kept coming near us to check us out - I guess they decided we were neither food, nor dangerous, and just kept on going.    Again - there were a lot of birds!  Tons of eagles, harrier hawks and more - here is a short eared owl.

a

We admired some more subarctic beauty on our way back to the lodge.

 After another light dinner, we were treated to another northern light show!  This one at 9:00pm! No need to get out in the middle of the night.  It was brighter too!  Plus, we could watch it by the bonfire - what a lovely way to end the day

tundra and wolves!

 Another very early morning, so that we could catch a pre-dawn fight to Churchill.  That made it possible to enjoy a beautiful sunrise from the plane.  The flight from Winnipeg to Churchill takes about 2 1/2 hours (in a twin propeller plane) flying almost the entire time over a vastness of nothingness dotted by many lakes that shimmered in the sunlight.  It’s pretty in an extremely desolate kind of way.

 

Churchill (which we will visit on our way back) has a tiny airport, where we switched to and even tinier plane for the last leg of our trip to Nanuk lodge. 

 

 The flight takes about 1 hour, and, since it flies much lower than a commercial plane, gave us better views of the surreal landscape.  We even saw our first polar bears (I saw 5 - could not take pictures though) and a moose1

  It’s hard to convey how far from civilization we are.  Only reachable by plane, no TV, no cellular. (They have satellite WIFI- which is not great, but explains why I can blog at all.  The lodge itself is all wood, cozy and grand at the same time, with lots of huge windows to enjoy the view and (hopefully) see much wild life.

 After a very nice lunch of soup, stuffed bread and cranberry cake (Forget dieting for a few days), we went for our first ride on the Hudson Bay low land:  a part of the sub boreal forest that keeps growing thanks to isostatic rebound  (google it! it's fascinating!). We go out on these "tundra rhinos" - specially deigned vehicles that can ride through the bogs, steams, rocks and vegetation of the area.

Speaking of vegetation:  it is spectacular!  Fall is setting in and the colors are just beautiful

We had an amazing encounter we a pair of young wolves.  They were born in May, part of a litter of 6 puppies.  We first saw 2 of them and got off our vehicles to get closer.  They were just as interested in us as we were in them and kept coming closer to us.  Then one of them howled several times to call the pack!  I have a wonderful video of it, but not enough bandwidth to share it right now.  We followed them for a bit until they met with 2 other pups and spent time playing together - and then again just came to hang out around us - it was really magical!

Our guides, Emri and Adam carry guns with them - but have never used them on the wildlife other than, on very few occasions to make noise to scare them away.

This is bird migration season.  There are A LOT of birds!  I will try to identify them as we go:  for now, there are 5 type of geese:  Canada, Snow, Blue morphe, Asoss and one that I don,t know....  I'll work on it....

 While we were having dinner, a black bear came to see if we would share....  we did not...  (the gate is electrified to keep wild life away.  Black bears are not particularly dangerous....  but polar bears are.

The sunset was magnificent.