Exploring Kootenay Lake

There are many white-tailed deer in the valley and they are, on the whole, quite visible. Yet there are some things that one rarely sees: rutting, mating, birth, and suckling. It is probably not that the deer has a sense of privacy, but that it has a sense of security about activities for which it, or its offspring, are more vulnerable to predators.

Last evening, I saw suckling.

This picture actually follows the next one in time and shows the fawn and parent having just separated. The fawn still has its tongue out and its hind legs are covered in mud.

This (somewhat confusing) scene shows the fawn suckling.

The word, exotropia, is not found in my computer dictionary. But it is found clearly on the web (e.g., wikipedia). It describes the situation were one’s two eyes, rather than looking at the same thing, are deviated outwards. In humans, exotropia is uncommon and is considered to be a problem to be corrected, for the two eyes then send two different images to the brain.

Bears have a marked exotropia at times. While the role that it plays in bears is speculative, the situation seems quite common and is apparently used to combine images to get a wider field of view.

I tried to learn about exotropia in bears, but found only one reference on the web. More on that below.

I start with two supposedly normal views of a bear’s eyes, one from black bears, one from grizzly bears. In these pictures, they are both presumably seeing the world in stereo for the pupils of each eye are looking at the same things. One assumes that, as with people, this is a bear’s default way of viewing the world.

A black bear looks at the world in stereo.

A grizzly bear looks at the world in stereo.

The next two pictures were used in recent previous postings, but now they are used to discuss exotropia. To see the effect, cover one eye of a bear to see where the other eye is looking, and then switch and cover the other eye. With each animal, the eyes are clearly divergent.

This black bear was fishing in a spawning channel.

This grizzly bear was fishing in a different spawning channel.

The only other reference I was able to find was one by a Vancouver-Island photographer and blogger, Wayne Barnes, who commented on the condition in 2012 and noted that V.I. black bears all seem to have divergent eyes (tofinophotography). On Vancouver Island, there were no grizzly bears and he had no data from the mainland.

My observations extend the condition to the mainland, and to grizzly bears. This suggests that it has remained a characteristic of bears since before the two species separated, about five million years ago. As the situation seems common in both black and grizzly bears, it is likely favourable for bears and can give them a wider field of view.

Bears have arrived at Kokanee Creek Park.

Usually, it is earlier, but while black bears have been here for a few days, they seem to be a bit late this year. Well, it was a good huckleberry season at higher altitudes, but one reason for the tardiness is apparently some fresh paving on the mountain side of the highway. The equipment and traffic this entailed seems to have postponed their arrival. 

But they are here now. There were eight seen a couple of evenings ago. The attraction is the spawning run of Kokanee salmon, and the black bears need to fatten up before hibernation. 

However, this year’s bears only turn up at dusk. This is a variant on their earlier year’s appearance of coming at any time of day. Skittishly, they seem be trying to avoid people, but their timing makes it difficult to take pictures. While I watched last evening, there were two adult bears, plus a mother and two cubs, but the low light and the skittishness left me with only pictures of three of them.

In the dim light, the camera would no longer focus on the mother bear and her two cubs. The bears were off to the side of the creek waiting for some people to disperse.

The first bear to arrive is seen with a captured Kokanee salmon. Photo by Cynthia Fraser.

This black bear looks cautiously up at people on the bank of the creek.

I rarely see a chipmunk. And it is even rarer that I see one here in the valley. This is to be contrasted with seeing the red squirrel which loudly berates me almost every time I step outside. The odd thing is that I do not remember this relative sparsity of chipmunks as a characteristic of my childhood here. Back then, there seemed to be many chipmunks. 

But today I was visited by a chipmunk. It had found the bird-feeding corner of the deck — a spot that has also enticed a black bear (last year), a bobcat, a raccoon, and, of course, the squirrel. 

I believe this is a Yellow-pine Chipmunk. It said nothing and generally ignored people watching it. Note, its tongue is out. 

The chipmunk allowed quite a close approach. Well, there was food.