Polar Bear Alley

This is a collection of northern stories - polar bear, arctic and otherwise from Churchill, Manitoba, Canada - the polar
bear capital of the world.

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Polar Bear Blog 

Today's Blog 
Hudson Bay Quest 2007
February 15-March 19, 2007
January 14-February 15, 2007
December-January12, 2007
December 1-10, 2006
November 20-30, 2006
November 5-20, 2006
October 27-Nov5, 2006
October 19-26, 2006
October 9-18, 2006
October 1-October 9, 2006
Sept 24-October 1, 2006
Sept 15-23, 2006
Sept 1-8, 2006
August 20-31, 2006
August 8-17, 2006
August 1-8, 2006  
July 25-31, 2006  
July 18-24, 2006   
July 12-17, 2006   
July 2006   
June 2006  
May 2006 
Archived articles

Polar Bear Blog - Damn Geese - August 8, 2006

Berry picking did not go so well yesterday. It appears that the geese are also having a very nice summer which seems to include eating my berry patch. Oh well.

We are seeing something kind of strange up here, most ducks and geese have large, healthy young that are almost ready to migrate, most born up to two weeks ahead of schedule. Others have tiny young that look almost newborn still fuzzy and clinging to their mom. For instance, the young loon on our lake is almost as large as its parents while one we saw yesterday was still riding on its mother's back.

So...here's the theory (of a couple bird scientist type guys up here)... we had a warm spring, especially April, so the snow melted off the tundra early giving a huge headstart to our vegetation and to everything that feeds off it. These little chicks that we are seeing this late in the season are actually the young of birds that would otherwise not reproduce - mostly juveniles themselves. Three months of fattening up has given them enough fat stores to reproduce and resulted in a whole whack of teenage pregnancies!

Polar Bear Blog - Cloudberries - August 7, 2006

Heading out east to check our cloudberry patch. Our new york hikers are very excited about helping us gather our 'winter stores' and I am very excited about a new batch of berry smoothies this weekend!

Cloudberries are also called baked apple berries and, naturally, they taste a little like baked apples. They grow two or three inches high and produce one fruit that kind of looks like a big, orange raspberry when it is ripe. We will probably grab some wild strawberries, tundra bilberries, crowberries and dewberries while we are out.

A warm spring burnt the snow cover off the tundra and the vegetation got a huge headstart, so all the berries are ready about a month early. Of course, so are the geese, and, as usual, it is a race to get to the berries before they have travelled through our local flocks of Canada and snow geese, leaving big purple splatters across the tundra.

Polar Bear Blog - Big Bear Weekend - August 5, 2006

Another quick update - busy busy... The polar bears have been busy this weekend too. Lots of them around, we encountered four on Friday - a single and a mother with two eight month old COYS (Cubs of the year). Probably eight or ten bears in the area all told.

A young polar bear stopped by the house around 1am last night and he just about sent my bear chasing dog, Milo, to doggy heaven. I give Milo free reign, turning a blind eye to his goose hunting in exchange for his security services at Camp Nanuq. Last night, he caught up with the bear while it was still four cabins down the road. You know he is around a bear when he starts barking. Milo talks alot, kind of a growling yowling chatter, his favourite word being 'oowwwwt' meaning 'let me out', but he never barks..unless there is a bear.

So, he was chasing this young bear last night when it turned on him and charged. Milo jumped out of the way only to resume his attack as soon as the bear turned away again. This time however the bear was a bit quicker and without a quick cracker shell from my neighbour, Milo probably would have turned from bear dog to bear food.

Of course, that was just the start of this bad bear's night but more about that later, too much news for one blog and I have another big day of hiking tomorrow...

Polar Bear Blog - coming soon - August 3, 2006

I am taking a group of new yorkers out to look for bears and talk about Churchill's sordid and splendid polar bear history tomorrow and then hope to have a few beers and a bonfire with the LaPerouse crew - so just a quick post tomorrow evening and then Saturday morning I will be putting together a redneck greenhouse photo gallery, writing some background on polar bear resarch, the polar bear DNA study, polar bears eating snow geese and posting a great story about a 'wolf attack' in Churchill (especially for Deb C.)...stay tuned - Kels (hmm...how about Monday night instead...)

Polar Bear Blog - Scat Cats - August 3, 2006 (late)

Actually, it is a scat dog. Quinoa, a Dutch sheperd, is a polar bear poop sniffing dog that has just returned from Wapusk National Park along with a few other weary and mildly smelly researchers.

The crew from LaPerouse Bay is back in Churchill for another week or so, coming off another season at Nester Two - a research camp built on the edge of Wapusk National Park. Led by Robert (Rocky) Rockwell, their main focus is on snow geese and vegetation and snow geese degradation of vegetation and other things that rhyme but this year another project has been added.

The reason Quinoa is a sh*t sniffing dog is because researchers Linda Gormezano and Rocky Rockwell are collecting polar bear scat and hair samples in an effort to study the western Hudson Bay polar bear population through DNA analysis. Samples will be taken back to the American Museum of Natural History and a genetic map of our bears will be made, including where they go in the summer, who they hang out with and what they are eating, etc.

This is a big study that is going to both pave the way for non-intrusive research methods, hopefully replacing the current helicopter mark and recapture studies, and will change the way we think about polar bears in general. For instance, I bet the myth that polar bears 'fast' in the summer and that they are solitary beings, spending much of their time wandering along, will be substantially altered.

There is going to be big news from Churchill's polar bears over these next couple years and not just the usual climate change doom and gloom. The rest of the world is finally going to find out what some of us already know; that polar bears are actually a social being with complex social structure, or as a non-science-type like me would call it, culture.

Polar Bear Blog - Albert Schweitzer Should Have Lived at Camp Nanuq - August 3, 2006

Yes! Sunny and 15-20C for the next few days... and we have bounced back into summer after a stormy little blip. Time to get back to the veranda and the zodiac... and my business plan ...and my taxes (for the last two years) ...and the newspaper ...and another book ...and selling the current book.

Ah yes, the shadowy figure of responsibility. It looms large and terrible in my brain but, to quote one of the greatest moustaches of all time, 'Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory'. Taxes? What taxes... ahh, better already.

The beluga whales are happy these days, despite having brains that are bigger and more complex than ours. The river is teeming with beluga babies, swimming alongside and sometimes above mom, enjoying a life of leisure before heading north for the winter.

The greenhouse is happy too. Although after a couple days of strong winds and rain it is looking a little worse for wear, missing a window pane and generally sagging in all the wrong places (hey it must be in its thirties..), but it is still standing.

The greenhouse experiment has been going well so far - a whole bunch of little tomatoes and big lettuce leaves. Potato plants are doing well, just beginning to flower (the ones inside the greenhouse, the ones outside are still thinking about it). Onions are good, carrots are coming along, sort of, and the cucumbers are, well, not.

Polar Bear Blog - Nice Tomatoes- August 2, 2006

Our redneck greenhouse took a beating over the last few days so here's a quick post in honour of our tomato crop as I am heading out the door. More about potatoes, cucumbers and tomatoes later...

Song of the day: Don Walser - Yodelling the Blues

Polar Bear Blog - Moody Manitoba Tuesday - August 1, 2006

Nothing good comes from an east wind. For two days, you could see clouds building out on the bay before they finally arrived, bringing a marathon downpour that made it feel like we jumped straight from July to September.

Today, it is still raining and still windy and still gloomy. A good day for northerners to stay inside and drink coffee and more coffee.

So that's what I was doing when a nice surprise swam by the cabin. A couple days ago, I wrote about the Pacific Loon, my favourite bird, and about their territorial instincts. Well, I should have included that they are territorial in breeding season and while protecting their nesting lake. However, later in summer, they occasionally gather in small groups, either in preparation for the commute back to the Pacific Coast, maybe as far as Baja. Kind of like a going away party.

Three years ago, we saw a group of eight or nine loons, swimming, diving and splashing together. There were still displays of dominance and many 'territorial' chases but without the vicious consequences. Today, I looked out the window and saw twelve Pacific Loons swimming by, maybe two metres (six feet) from my front yard, their steel gray heads somehow gleaming in the mist.

I hope they come back for a party tonite or communal feeding or whatever it is but it really is the display of a lifetime. Actually, the second display of a lifetime but I am not complaining.