During our boating trips on Prince William Sound we often see black bears. Typically we are trying to avoid them in search of safe places to hike/walk the dog. On our most recent trip we were sans dog so I took the opportunity to give the black bears a little photo love. It was fog/misty rain most of the time. Following are my efforts. We saw over 20 separate animals. These are the six that I was able to get reasonable shots.
All shot with Nikon D500 and Nikkor 200-500mm f5.6
All posted at 1200 px wide so check them out in the light box.
1) Check out the salmon eggs coming out of the fish. After the bears eat a few fish they will continue feeding and only eat the roe. Brown bear also eat the skin which contains all the fat. Interestingly all the blackies that we watched only ate the roe and didn't bother with the skin. So much for the efficiency of nature.
2) This was a massive bear(as blacks go), presumably a male. Black bears don't share space like brownies will do when feeding on a salmon stream. We saw several other bears attempt to enter the feeding area while this guy was there and they all left at a run after taking one look at this guy.
3) This is one of the smaller bears that was hanging about waiting for the big boy to finish eating. This one came out of the woods quite close to where we were sitting in our kayak in ankle deep water.
4) This guy/gal was on a different creek a couple hundred meters away. Another subordinate bear that was feeding around the perimeter of the main feed area.
5) Different day, different bay, no rain. Late in the evening we saw a very large bear feeding on a small creek that ran out of a small canyon. I returned early next morning and found this little guy. A very small bear likely in its first year away from its mom.
6) I watched/shot the above little guy for 15 minutes or so when it left the creek in an apparent hurry. The reason became apparent when this larger(though not really big) bear walked silently out of the woods above the stream. This was an occasion when the zoom came in handy. This was shot at 200mm. Look at the ears on this guy.