Exploring Kootenay Lake

There seems to be a rather large number of Black Bears around the valley bottoms this year, both scrounging on the ground and in the trees.

This is third posting showing a bear in a tree that I have made in the last two weeks. There are few times of the year when one gets to see this activity, and, indeed, rather few years in a decade. The last time I remember such a glut of bears in trees was four years ago. I wonder if this has been a particularly poor year for huckleberries on the mountainside.

A chocolate Black Bear was about five metres up a cherry tree. It didn’t like being watched.

Black Bears were given their name on the East Coast where all are obligingly black. They are also uniformly black on the West Coast. But, around Kootenay Lake, Black Bears come in a delightful range of colours. Some, of course, are black and a few of these sport a white V on their chests. In addition to black, our Black Bears come in the colour morphs of chocolate, cinnamon (my favourite), blue (dubbed the Glacier Bear), beige, and blond (designated the Spirit Bear).

Although individual bears might appear in any of these colours, I long assumed that a particular bear would only display a single morph. Surely no individual would appear as a mixture of two different colour morphs — let alone the three I saw yesterday.

The primary colour of the lactating sow I saw was chocolate, but it had a Spirit Bear’s back and a Glacier Bear’s flanks. I am not a bear researcher, so I don’t know if this is common, but I have seen quite a few Black Bears, and this melange was a first for me.

A chocolate Black Bear looked as if a hair dresser had added a blond streak down its back.

That this was a lactating sow became evident with this side view. A pectoral nipple is visible just behind the right front leg and an inguinal nipple is dimly visible in front of the right hind leg. One can see that the sow is actively nursing cubs by the fact that the fur surrounding the inguinal nipple is slightly discoloured from the saliva of the cubs. This picture also provided the first hint that the sow’s flanks showed yet a third colour morph.

A shot from behind shows the mixture of colour morphs: It is a mainly chocolate Black Bear with a Spirit Bear back and a Glacier Bear flank. This was somewhat unexpected.

Surely my most unexpected observation of this year was made last evening when a Chipmunk crashed an outdoor dinner party.

When I was a child, I would often see chipmunks at the valley bottom around the Lake. However, for years now, I have only seen them higher in the mountains. I don’t know what is going on, but maybe the high elevations are their normal home and they only expand their altitude range during a temporary population explosion. Have there been more chipmunks seen this year?

During supper on the deck, an unexpected guest arrived: a Yellow-pine Chipmunk.

Wanting to be hospitable, we offered it popcorn, which it ate with enthusiasm.

It then availed itself of the water bowl set out for a canine visitor.

Maybe it is time to make some more popcorn.

I have made many postings about marmots, but all recent ones treated the Yellow-bellied Marmot. This one is about the Hoary Marmot.

Three species of marmot are found on the mainland of British Columbia — Yellow-bellied, Hoary, and Woodchuck — all of which are found around Kootenay Lake. Of those, I had only seen the first. Here is the second and largest of them. 

The presence of all three of these marmots here is somewhat accidental. Kootenay Lake is near the northern limit of the Yellow-bellied’s range, and near the southern limit for the other two. The first two are fairly common, but the Woodchuck seems a local rarity. Recent postings have favoured the Yellow-bellied because it inhabits the valleys while the Hoary favours subalpine mountain slopes.

The Hoary Marmot is named for the silver-gray fur on its shoulders and upper back. It spends nearly half its morning sunning itself on rocks.

The Hoary’s lower back and tail show hints of reddish-brown. This Hoary shared its talus with Pikas.

This is the time of year to see the pups.

“Maybe the time has come to roll over and sun the other side.”

Who has seen a Pika?

Although subalpine hikers sometimes hear its warning, eeep, spotting this potato-sized relative of the hare is difficult when it is at home in the talus, for it blends well. Pikas do make quick trips to the edges of the talus to collect vegetation to eat and store for the winter.

It would have been fun to watch a Pika do something interesting, such as foraging or eating, but in the end, I was just pleased to be close enough to take a few pictures.

A Pika peeks from its rocky cover to see if it is safe to forage.

It spots an intruder and quickly retreats to its hidden realm.