VIEWING THE WILDLIFE

We were fortunate to see a lot of wildlife throughout British Columbia, Yukon, and Alaska. This grizzly was strolling along beside the highway between Haines, Alaska, and the Alaska Highway. He was unpreturbed that we slowed to his pace and tried in the dark afternoon to get a clear picture of him. Loafing and huffing seemed to be his schedule until suddenly he reared up on a sapling and vigerously scratched his back to a fare-thee-well. We could almost hear him sigh!




Camped near the road in a rest are provided by the Yukon department of parks and highways, we were sharing the area with a bicyclist who was enrout from Whitehorse, Y.T., to the Arctic Ocean via the Dempster Highway. Snug in his tent, he was not aware of this fox which was upon his table and going through the remains of his dinner. Even when the man roused, stepped out of his tent and "chased" the fox away, the critter did not stay gone long, and he returned soon for the rest of the goodies he was stealing.



On several occasions we spotted moose, both cows like this one and bulls still developing the huge horns they will display this fall when the courting season comes around. After the scarse grasses of spring are no longer filling, most moose move into the ponds and lakebeds to forage on the new vegetation to meet their daily quota of sixty to one hundred pounds of graze. Amazingly, all this is converted to small, hard green/black pellets no larger than half the length of my little finger. Nearly 99% of all the moose eats is converted to fat, muscle or energy. Almost nothing is left for scat.

Black Bears are common along northlands highways and love to feed early in the season on the greens and easily dug roots in the roadside right-of-ways where such stuff grows first because that's where the sun melts the snow first. Unfortunately, most blackies are quite shy and flee to cover as soon as a car slows, for a picture, for example. We saw a lot but got very few photos, usually of the part that goes over the log last. This was a good year for black bears to judge from their lush coats and the several husky sized cubs which will soon be on their own.


The Alaska Highway goes through some pretty amazing mountian passes at times including one impressive region west of Fort Nelson where the springtime sheep and goat herds are protected and have found that the road surfaces offer plenty of salt from the winter efforts to make the road drivable. This stone sheep ram stepped off of the road surface as we stopped for the photo-op, but all the youngsters with him didn't bother.




Bison have been introduced in several locations along the highway, and believe me they have the right of way whenever they want to cross the road. Most just munch along the roadbanks where thick. lush grasses abound and act very much lke a bunch of cows. Come to think of it, that's just what they are. In herds of thirty or fourty, however, there is another dynamic at work and one can begin to imagine what the American and Canadian plains once were like when such animals covered the land to the horizon.


Another creature often seen but difficult to capture with a camera is the eagle. We saw hundred - maybe more - in groups throughout Southeast Alaska and more individuals further north. Always magnificant flyers and sometimes acrobats in the air, they carry the majesty we have assigned them as national symbol quite well. These are two of several which were noisily pearched only a few feet above the ridge of the house where we stayed in Juneau. Actually this limb and others near it held haalf a dozen or more of the birds, all outstanding in the bright morning sun.

This little guy is a yearling cariboo. As soon as I "clicked" this picture all we saw was his white flag bouncing downhill! You'll have to take our word for all the other animals we saw but didn't photograph because we were driving along and the camera was not at hand or the critter fled too quickly. And who tries to picture the squirrels, chipmunks, marmots, porkypines, rabbits, weasel-types, and - was that a lynx?? - and other small unidentified beasties and birds.




We did see some wonderful swans and geese, and other waterfowl. Birds are probably the hardest to capture while driving along at fifty miles (80 kilometers) per hour. Once in a while at a waterside spot a few would sereenly pass with little concern at the bankside watchers. The bottom line, I guess in all this wildlife viewing is that the real thing in the wild is sure a lot more impressive than a zoo setting, you-betcha.