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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Hudson Bay Quest 2007
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Archived articles

Polar Bear Blog - Northern Harrier - July 24, 2006

I should probably just change the name of this blog because everything up here is way too neat not to write about. So today I'm talking about birds. Actually, just one bird, in fact, a raptor that is cruising around just outside my window right now.

It is a Northern Harrier (the ones the fighter jets are named after) hunting and hovering around Camp Nanuq. Harriers, also called Marsh Hawks up here (as opposed to seagulls which are called sh*t hawks up here), are fairly common migrants to the Churchill area. This one is a female, dark brown, highlighted by a white bar across its narrow tail. She is pretty large for a harrier, probably 2' long with a 4' plus wingspan.

They seem precarious and graceful at once, flying low over the tundra or teetering 10-12' off the ground searching for prey, sometimes stopping in mid-air to scan, motionless and impossibly aloft, looking and listening for anything at all. They cruise along hunting lemmings and voles, the arctic's rodents - our version of mice minus the tail.

Harriers and other raptors track their prey with their highly develped eyesight. At least 8x superior to man's, they can spot movement from impossible distances and may even be able to track prey by the residue of their warm little bodies, creating almost a 'Mondrian' grid of neon heat traces on the tundra.

Even their predatory look is an adaptation to hunting. Their hooked beak adapted to tearing flesh and their equally hooked brow adapted to shield their eyes, both from sun and flailing little rodents.

Polar Bear Blog - July 23, 2006

We are soaked in a thick fog this morning, my own lake barely visible. Think of it as a hangover from last night's antics; a continuing barrage of lightning and thunder and torrential rain.

This seems to be the result of a hot northern summer. While Churchill has enjoyed a very reasonable 15-20C, the rest of the northern Manitoba has been up around 25-30C. As the air warms over the land, south winds begin to push this air north towards the bay, creating tremendous, billowing cumulus clouds along the way.

Two years ago, we watched these thunderclouds turn over on themselves as they moved over Churchill and onto the cool, brackish water of Hudson Bay. With their puffy domes and towers collapsing, the clouds turned their anger from the Bay to our town. We went from the hotspot in Manitoba at 25C to the cold spot (around 5C) and golf ball size hail in less than five minutes.

Yesterday, you could see the storms building on the horizon by about 1 or 2 pm. It would take about five hours for them to reach Churchill and unleash their fury. Nevertheless, it was pretty amazing, provided that you were inside.

The only real problem with these incredible lightning displays is for the polar bears. Often, with storms such as these, the majority of the rain occurs when they reach the coast. The same cannot be said for lightning. Considering this has been a fairly dry summer, the northern forest and tundra can ignite quickly.

Coming from the south, these lightning strikes occur directly over the polar bear maternity denning area. Any fires in there destroy polar bear dens that have been active for decades. With little suitable habitat available for new dens, this can be a major difficulty for the western Hudson Bay bears.

Here is a link to the forest fire update from the Province of Manitoba. So far, it looks to be a fairly reasonable fire season in the north (click here for historical fire information - 1914-2004) but scientists figure that a changing climate will mean more dry summers, more lightning strikes and more challenges for the polar bears of Churchill.

Polar Bear vs. Beluga Blog - July 22, 2006

So, there is a film crew in town this weekend creating a documentary about Churchill's beluga whales. As it turns out, I know the director - from ages ago and from strange and random encounters every few years.

Anyway, I agreed to do an interview and helped them find a few other locals with whale stories, true and otherwise. During this interview, she focused on polar bears vs. beluga whales and asked if there was a future for beluga whales tourism in Churchill.

I thought for a bit and finally said 'no'. It is a strange answer considering Churchill's has some of the best whale viewing opportunities in the world - on a good day there are 3,000 whales in the river, on a bad day there are 300. Belugas swim right up to the boat, around and under it. It is pretty cool and really should be a model for tourism development in the rest of the arctic.

But, we really only get three or four thousand visitors through the summer - a pretty small number that is either stable or even declining. This is mostly due to the fact that it costs a lot to get up to Churchill - around $1000 just to fly from Winnipeg. You can do it cheaper by driving to Thompson and hopping on the train - but the combination of heavily loaded grain cars and summer heat have kind of wrecked the tracks and you have to expect the train to be late (which can be part of the charm...).

Things are different in October, chartered flights come into Churchill on a regular basis and several travel companies organize trips to Churchill to see polar bears. There are a lot of options.

Of course, this is due to twenty years of marketing and promotion by National Geographic, BBC, etc... Churchill's belugas were just overshadowed by the bears and only now is limited media interest being shown to them.

But enough beluga doom and gloom - this doc looks kind of neat and might change the way, at least, Canada views Churchill's whales. Plus I was wearing my 'I Club Baby Seals' shirt for the interview so maybe Paul McCartney will come up here next year for a benefit concert!

Beluga Blog- July 20, 2006

Headed out on the river today with a couple friends in search of whales. It was a fairly slow day so we only saw 50 or 60 whales but it was still pretty amazing.

Usually there are around 3,000 whales kicking around the river, swimming in and out with the tides. The last few days have been a little quiet (but still awesome), a few locals figure that an Inuit boat might be in town or passed by. Inuit still hunt whales up north and word spreads just as fast among the belugas as it does from the Gypsy Bakery gossip table in Churchill so the whales are a little shy for a few days afterwards.

This afternoon, however, their shyness finally passed. After floating around for a while, we eventually found a family pod of mothers and their young. They were chasing a school of capelin (kind of like a little sardine) across the tide line (where the salt water tide meets the fresh water of the river).

We trolled along beside for maybe 20 minutes before heading back. Most of the time the whales were about 10' from the boat, their scarred back shining in the afternoon sun. I should have some video to post fairly soon. Another good day in Churchill.

Still a lot of bears around, two were hanging out around L5 today and we heard shots behind the Town Centre Complex while we were in town - a sure sign of an unwelcome visitor to town.

Polar Bear Blog- July 18, 2006

What a difference a garbage dump makes. Last year was pretty normal, sometimes you could run into a polar bear at the dump or occasionally see one lying on the coast but you a lot of them just camped out in the willows near the dump, a nice covert place to spend the day. This year is something quite different.

Today, we went for a drive along the coast to check out if the rumors of mass bear activity were true. Wow, were they true. All told we ran into ten different bears between the airport and halfway point (we did not even reach the site of the new recycling centre!)

The day started with two bear sparring in Hudson Bay. These two were wading neck deep in the bay, wrestling, mouthing, punching, body slamming, you name it. Pretty amazing since it was about 17-18C here today.

They were probably siblings, maybe two or three year old 'cubs' since a female was swimming near them, eventually coming ashore when they would not stop fighting. She found a spot on the sand and watched them, nervous and annoyed, maybe a little glad that she will push them away and head back on her own pretty soon.

Soon, a large male (likely 1,000+ lbs) swam by, creating an unintentional disturbance to their splashings. However, he was intent on some destination to the east and once he swam intently by (acutally, through) they resumed their playfighting once again. This sparring continued for at least an hour.

We skirted the coast and pulled up on a beach hoping to 'head him off at the pass' and catch another glimpse of him and what we found was a mother and two 'coys' or cubs of the year, investigating an old metal structure on the coast before continuing down the coast.

Soon, the big male came back into view still purposefully swimming, however as he passed our little family came back into view, apparently deciding that a swim was a nice idea. However, they swam right in front and around of this big male.

Females usually keep their cubs away from male bears, wary of these lumbering, predatory hulks. But, confident or crazy, this one took her family right by him, almost baiting him. And, of course, it worked. His interest piqued, he relented from his seemingly unrelenting path and turned on her.

Chasing her cubs through the water, he closed in and forced her hand. She turned and lunged right at him, meeting his seal-breath head-on. One or maybe both of them uttered something between lion's roar and a wild boar but whatever it was, it left us uttering absolutely nothing but 'wow'.

The drama over, the continued their afternoon swim as though nothing had happened at all.

A friend of mine insisted that the closure of the dump would completely change the dynamics of Churchill's polar bears. So far it appears he is right.