Another great June Eagles & Bears photography trip to the Katmai Coast of Alaska aboard the Coastal Explorer! June is always a wonderful time to spend along this beautifully rocky coast full of sedge meadows and Brown Bears. This time of year always brings lots of diversity of subjects beyond Brown Bears including Bald Eagles on their nests, Horned and Tufted Puffins, Wolves, Sea Otters, and we even had a family of Moose this year!
After our float Plane flight from Kodiak over to Kukak Bay on the Katmai Coast, we immediately boated over to one of the best Bald Eagle nests I’ve ever seen! Perched on the top of a 40 foot tall rock sea mount, this nest had a perfect view into it from the cliffs above. I estimate the two young eagles in the nest to be 7-10 days old. Both mother and father Eagle seemed very relaxed with our presence, and we spent 2-3 hrs watching and photographing.
We then headed over to the famous Hallo Bay where the huge sedge meadow always brings in many bears this time of year. Our mornings and afternoons were spent with a dozen or more bears eating sedge. We had a number of Sows with cubs which are always a joy to spend time with! On the island just off the coast, we also had many Horned and Tufted Puffin, a lone light colored Wolf and several Brown Bears.
One of the most interesting encounters we had was on another Island off the coast from Hallo Bay. We went out there to do some fishing and found several Brown Bears feeding on an old Whale carcass. We had a family of Mother and three older cubs as well as an adult lone female bear. We spent about 4 hours on the Island one day watching the family play in the tide pools and feed on the carcass. While the mother bear and one cub were sleeping on a rock ledge above the carcass, the solitary female came over and chased the two remaining cubs up to the safety of their mother and sibling on the cliff. The whole family watched from the cliff as the lane Bear snacked and napped by the whale carcass.
Nothing is quite so special as spending this precious time in these truly wild places! Thank you to our Captain Chuck Keim and his wife Olga…..I look forward to seeing you and the wild Katmai again next year!