After years of saying we wanted to do it, we finally managed to get up to Churchill to see the bears.
Why Churchill?
Geography - Churchill sits on the southern end of the western coastline of Hudson Bay, so counter clockwise sea currents bring freezing cold water down from the North, where it meets fresh water coming out of the Churchill river and flowing north off the permafrost, so the ice forms there quicker and earlier than the rest of the bay. Hudson Bay is also less saline than the Atlantic due to being a bit disconnected and having all the fresh water flowing in, which makes it freeze more readily than the ocean, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy as the ice then reduces evaporation so the salinity never rises.
Why Bears?
Because the bay freezes over so well, the ice lasts until July and the currents take the last of the ice to the south side of the bay, so the bears come off the ice onto land to the south east of Churchill and spend the summer on the tundra. According to the guides the bears spent 2 1/2 years as cubs with their mothers, so would have learnt where to go when, and also they can "smell the ice starting to form". My schoolboy chemistry and physics can't quite get my head around how ice can smell any different from the water it is formed from, and how they tell its sea ice rather than the fresh water lakes on top of the permafrost that also freeze over, but they know and start to head north west toward Churchill
What do they do?
Technically their main diet is ring seals, so most of them haven't eaten for 4 months since they last came off the ice, so they are hungry. We did see one sub-adult (maybe 4 years old) that was picking on the carcass of a cub that had been killed the day before, probably by another large male. Apparently its not uncommon for adult males to kill cubs both for food and to make the mothers mate again, but its the first time our guides had actually seen it happen. Not the nicest of thoughts but that's nature - cubs have about a 50% survival rate
We also found one big boy unenthusiastically picking on some washed up kelp. Speculation is that it may be for minerals, or to aid digestion, or from boredom, but whatever it is they don't seem that keen on the salad bar - sounds sensible to me.
And one very large bear eating snow and licking the rocks - again to aid digestion.
Apart from that they are basically trying to conserve energy by laying around and not doing much, especially as it was a warm day. Their fur is so dense and so well insulated that water doesn't cool them down, so stretching out on some snow is the best they can get, and it takes 1/13th of the energy of walking around. They also don't like the wind on their noses (who does?) so tend to face away from the wind.
Exception to that is cubs are smaller so like the warmth of their mothers, so tend to bundle up with them.
And one for Johnmill....
Not going to argue the quality but definitely the biggest four by four by far. Firetruck axles, all custom built in Churchill, and I've not seen a landie with a balcony, khazi and propane stove built in, although I dare say someone has converted a 101 somewhere....
And yes, these are all Maria's photos. Well, they are a small selection of the 250+ she took, and video, but we saw all these ourselves - nothing is stock from the web.
