Month: August 2017

Saturday we headed out the Haines highway back through the Bald Eagle Preserve in search of eagles. After driving just over 20 miles, we had little to show for our effort. Despite both of us looking and being along the river, the eagles weren’t to be found. We saw one young one (no white tail yet) and another far away, so we decided to give up and go back to the road out to where the bears were. Yesterday when we drove out, we saw about 8 or 10 so we thought we might have better luck and we’d have another bear-viewing opportunity.

We were in luck as far as bears go – the two “cubs” were fishing. They’re now in their 3rd season, having been kicked out by mama bear to fend for themselves. There were quite a lot of people watching them, and the ranger had her hands full trying to keep track of where both cubs were – they kept moving from the river across the road to the bush and back. Sometimes one was on each side of the road, and the ranger was trying to control traffic, letting people through, but yet wanting to give the bears a chance to cross over and not feel threatened. In the midst of everything, someone from fisheries and game wanted to go out on the weir to count fish so he had to chase the bears out of the way so he could go over!

After leaving the bears, we did find an eagle that Paul could set up the scope and watch. The picture below is taken using the scope and his Samsung S7 smartphone. He’s still working on trying to get a good picture, but this worked out not bad.

This morning (Sunday) we left Haines and have headed up towards Whitehorse. We’ve stopped for the night about 160 km from Whitehorse at a Yukon Government Campground. It’s been a hot day (28 degrees C.) and at the campground, it is one of few that has a lake that gets a bit warmer for swimming. With it being Sunday afternoon, there were quite a few families out enjoying the beach. Tomorrow we’ll make it to Whitehorse where we’ll spend the next few days.

We left our campground around noon to head through town and out the other side to the other State Park that has a fishing weir where the bears like to go and fish. We weren’t disappointed – there was one female bear, fishing for quite a while. There were a couple of people out on the weir who were counting fish – this bear knows the location – she has been there previous years. She is also quite cautions of people. When the men wanted to come off the weir, they simply started walking and made noise and the bear moved off to let them through. She then continued her fishing.

We saw quite a few eagles while we were out driving. We had clear blue skies – just a perfect day!

More good weather is forecast for this next week – tomorrow we’ll head back out and see if we can find more eagles. It is the gathering place for them – by October/November, there will be about 3500 congregating here. The ranger told us to day that there are about 400 though that make their home here so we’ll take a look for some of them.