Naturalist's Notebook Guest Post: Photographing the Endangered Spirit Bear

British photographer, conservationist and environmental traveler Jenny Varley shared with us some of the amazing photos she took of Kermode (KER-mode) bears, one of the world's rarest animals, on the coast of British Columbia in Canada. Kermodes (named for Francis Kermode, a Canadian zoologist who studied them) are also called spirit bears because of their white, ghostlike coloration. They're the official mammal of British Columbia. Here's Jenny's description of these extraordinary animals and her experience watching and photographing them:

Because both parents must carry the gene mutation responsible for producing a white bear, white spirit bears can give birth to black cubs, which remain black all of their lives. (photo by Jenny Varley)

By Jenny Varley

Spirit bears are a subspecies of the American black bear. They are found only in the northwest coastal regions of British Columbia, predominantly in the 12,000-square-mile Great Bear Rainforest (see map below), in which they are the iconic species. On some islands in the Great Bear Rainforest, spirit bears may make up 40% of the (non-grizzly) bear population. It is estimated there may only be 300 to 400 such bears, which makes them rarer than giant pandas!

Studies have found that the white bears are more successful than black bears at hunting salmon during the day, when—from a fish-eye view—their coloration makes them less visible against the sky. (photo by Jenny Varley)

Studies have found that the white bears are more successful than black bears at hunting salmon during the day, when—from a fish-eye view—their coloration makes them less visible against the sky. (photo by Jenny Varley)

Spirit bears are not albinos and although their predominant color is white they have varying amounts of ginger in their coats. Their eyes are pigmented and they also often have pigmented snouts. The genetic basis for the white pelage has been identified as a mutation in the gene encoding the receptor for melanocortin 1, a protein involved in the regulation of pigment production in cells called melanocytes. The mutation is recessive, which means that for a spirit bear to be white it must have two copies of the variant gene—one from each parent. This also means that, depending on the genetic make-up of individual bears, a black female may give birth to white offspring, or even one black and one white, and white mothers can give birth to black cubs. 

Interestingly, a variant in the same gene in humans is present in people with red hair and freckles and who tan easily.

The Great Bear Rainforest has been described as one of the world's largest remaining tracts of unspoiled temperate rainforest. In February 2016, after a decade of negotiations, the British Columbia government announced a deal to protect 85% of …

The Great Bear Rainforest has been described as one of the world's largest remaining tracts of unspoiled temperate rainforest. In February 2016, after a decade of negotiations, the British Columbia government announced a deal to protect 85% of the rainforest from commercial logging. On March 1, 2016, as part of the compromise, the provincial government assured timber companies that for the next 10 years they would be allowed to harvest 2.5 million cubic meters of wood each year (down from 4 million a decade ago) under "strict, ecosytem-based management rules." 

Kermode bears have been known to catch and feast on as many as 80 salmon in one session. Five species of Pacific salmon spawn in the streams of the Great Bear Rainforest. (photo by Jenny Varley)

There are a number of threats to Kermode bears. Hunting and poaching are always a danger (even though hunting white bears is banned in British Columbia, hunting black bears that carry the white gene variation is not). Falling numbers of salmon returning to the area can result in decreased survival, particularly during hibernation. 

The most significant threats are man-made; habitat loss, industry (including the continued logging), and the proposed Enbridge Northern Gateway pipeline from Alberta to Kitimat, which could result in more than 200 tankers per year traversing the narrow and pristine waterways of the Great Bear Rainforest. That project suffered a setback in November of 2015, when new Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau imposed a moratorium on tanker traffic along British Columbia's north coast, but the Calgary-based Enbridge energy-delivery corporation says it has not given up on building the pipeline.

A male spirit bear can stand almost six feet tall and weigh 500 pounds; females, such as this one, are notably smaller and usually top out at about 300 pounds. (photo by Jenny Varley)

Many thanks to Jenny for bringing us face-to-face with these rare and remarkable bears! (photo by Jenny Varley)

On our visit to the Great Bear Rainforest, we were lucky enough to spend almost a whole day with a spirit bear and her two black cubs. One cub was very cheeky, being quite boisterous and stealing fish from Mom as she caught them. Our guide was the brilliant Marven Robinson, who, in addition to guiding, has done much to raise awareness of the dangers faced by these wonderful animals.  After a day watching the mom and cubs we saw a second mother walking along the shore.  A truly special day and such a privilege to see.  You can find more images of these bears and other wildlife on my website, www.jennymvarley.co.uk. —Jenny Varley

Come Along On a One-Day, Three-Stop Antarctic Wildlife Adventure

Dessert first, anyone? Never before had I wolfed down freshly baked butterscotch-chip cookies and coffee for breakfast, but trust me, it's not an unpleasant way to begin a day in the Antarctic (or anywhere else, I suspect). It's also a rapid way to fuel up if it's 4 a.m. and you're in a hurry to pull on boots, gloves, a hat and four layers of warm clothing and climb into a Zodiac boat for the first of three—three!—expeditions in the same day at major bird and seal breeding grounds on the remote, remarkable wonder of the world that is South Georgia Island. 

We arrived at Salisbury Plain on South Georgia Island in time to watch the Sun rise over a vast expanse of king penguins and elephant and fur seals.

Those of you who already have been following our three-week trip to Antarctica aboard the Russian oceanographic vessel the Akademik Sergey Vavilov (and if you haven't been following, please feel free to scroll down or look at the index on the right to find earlier posts) have seen amazing photos from Tierra del Fuego, the Falkland Islands, the open ocean and parts of South Georgia Island. Prepare for more.

On this day Pamelia and I and our shipmates would wander through the beautiful landscapes, wildly changing weather and extraordinary wildlife at Salisbury Plain, Prion Island and Elsehul, three of the gems of South Georgia Island. We would see a total of 25 animal species, including four types of albatrosses, three kinds of seals, and a trio of penguin varieties. It would be another day-of-a-lifetime, of which this trip had provided several already. I will let the pictures below tell the story. 

The king penguins and their brown, fluffy chicks filled the plain around us in every direction on South Georgia Island's largest coastal plain.

Salisbury Plain is home to South Georgia's greatest king penguin colony. See our previous posts, below, for more on these regal, remarkable animals. 

Waves of king penguins came ashore and joined the masses on the plain. The ocean is home to these penguins for most of their lives, during the months when they're not breeding or molting (as many of them were at this time).

Fur seals popped up between the clumps of tussock grass. I had learned the hard way about the aggressiveness of these seals (see our post "Don't Mess With a Fur Seal") and would hear several weeks later about a bloody encounter: A passenger on another Antarctic voyage soon after ours suffered a severed artery when bitten here at Salisbury Plain by a fur seal. The injury required the ship to rendezvous with a British Navy vessel at sea and transfer the man for emergency surgery in the Falkland Islands.

Southern giant petrels scouted the plain for prey, specifically penguin chicks.

The eyes and bill of the Southern giant petrel are equally striking. Note the tube on the bill, part of a system that seabirds have evolved over millions of years for excreting salt from the sea water that they drink.

Pamelia spent one-on-one time with certain king penguins for ink studies that she would paint later. We'll soon share more of those studies and her time-lapse videos of herself painting them.

Once again we felt we were standing in one of the most breathtaking places on Earth.

As many of you know, we've brought the young Charles Darwin back to life at The Naturalist's Notebook and he was with us, enjoying his first voyage to the Antarctic. He's been writing his own blog about his trip. 

The weather took a dramatic shift as we prepared to board the Zodiacs and return to the ship for a brief rest before heading to our next landing site, Prion Island. It was still just 7 a.m. 

Soon we were on the rough seas in a Zodiac again, this time bound for Prion Island, home to wandering albatrosses on the nest and—at long last—rare South Georgia pipits for Pamelia and me to see.

Soon we were on the rough seas in a Zodiac again, this time bound for Prion Island, home to wandering albatrosses on the nest and—at long last—rare South Georgia pipits for Pamelia and me to see.

A male Southern elephant seal stood sentry along the narrowing channel we had to negotiate to reach Prion Island.

We caught our first good glimpse of a leopard seal—a species that can grow to more than 11 feet long and is second only to killer whales among Antarctic predators. He was resting and presumably waiting for a chance to devour one of the gentoo penguins that were nesting and swimming nearby.

We ascended an icy wooden observation walkway (the only such visitor trail we would encounter on our three-week Antarctic voyage) to get a look at the wandering albatrosses nesting in the tussock grass.

Wandering albatrosses are extraordinary birds. They have the largest wingspan of any avian species (up to 11-and-a-half feet) and can live for 50 years if not done in by getting snagged on baited longline fishing hooks, which kill about 100,000 albatrosses of all kinds each year. 

The wandering albatrosses that we saw on the nests were seven-month-old juveniles. Our ship ornithologist, Simon Boyes, affectionately called this one Albert. Young Albert had been waiting for days for his parents—amazing long-distance flyers, as all albatrosses are—to return from a 3,100-mile flight to the waters off Brazil to gather food that they would regurgitate to feed him.

Wandering albatrosses flying along with a ship have always been thought of by sailors as a good omen—a mythology made famous by Samuel Taylor Coleridge's 1798 poem "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," in which the mariner shoots an albatross that has just led his ship to safety from an Antarctic ice jam. The mariner and his ship suffer the consequences. We don't believe in omens, but seeing Albert certainly felt like a lifetime moment of good fortune.

Nearly as thrilling as standing a few yards from a wandering albatross was finding and photographing a South Georgia pipit, a species that had been endangered by the invasive brown rats in South Georgia. (See our previous Antarctic post for more on the extreme efforts underway to eradicate the rats.) These pipits hover in the air before diving into the tussock grass to catch insects. I was able to watch this one wandering and hunting in the grass for several minutes.

After a few hours back on board the Akademik Sergey Vavilov, we embarked on our final expedition of the day, to Elsehul, home to breeding gentoo penguins, fur seals, gray-headed albatrosses and light-mantled albatrosses. And also a macaroni penguin colony—that grayish patch within the green on the mountainside. 

Here's a (blurry) closeup of the colony. Macaroni penguins are closely related to rockhopper penguins and share the ability to climb up steep rocky hills to reach seemingly inaccessible spots like this.

Some of the macaroni penguins were swimming.

Pamelia and I were bundled up again the strong winds and pelting snow.

Fur seals were watching us. Often visitors are not allowed to go ashore at at Elsehul because the breeding male fur seals are too aggressive (or because the waves and weather make landings impossible). Throughout our time at Elsehul, we had to be extremely careful not to intrude on the fur seals' space—and there were a lot of them around, often blending in with the rocks.

We headed off on a rocky climb.

Seal (and skua and petrel and penguin?) bones littered the ground—so many of them that one of the expedition members, noted wildlife filmmaker Peter Bassett, later put together a comical mock horror film in which the nesting gentoo penguins were bloodthirsty killers responsible for turning Elsehul into a boneyard.

We were on our way through muck and tussock grass to see penguins and albatrosses.

We soon encountered more gentoo penguins stomping around with their webbed, peach-colored feet.

Gentoos are playful, long-tailed penguins and, at 30 inches, the third-tallest of all penguin species.  

Yes, this gentoo's nest was made mostly of bones. Cue the horror music! 

Most of the nests were made of mud and stones. Male and female gentoos take turns on the nests (which contain two eggs) for a month, trading places every one to three days. 

A nest builder in action.

Sometimes it was hard to believe that we were on one of the world's most remote and wildlife-rich islands watching these amazing animals.

The penguins and fur seals shared some of the same ground, though the penguins quickly moved aside if a fur seal charged through.

The albatrosses were nesting on the cliffside ahead of us.

Our first look at a gray-headed albatross, a threatened species whose numbers are continuing to decline. 

A nesting gray-headed albatross like this one lays one egg in a year. If the chick survives, its parents will take a year off before breeding again. In that year, these remarkable flyers might circle the globe more than once.

I had seen a light-mantled albatross once before on the trip (see earlier post), but not this close.

Beautiful.

As we started to make our way back through the nesting gentoos, the fur seals again watched us and sometimes rumbled threateningly in our direction.

This shot gives a feel for the density of gentoo nests we saw.

There's a glimpse of that long tail, a distinguishing trait of not just gentoos but also two other types of penguins (chinstraps and adelies).

On the Zodiac ride back to the ship, we again watched the swimming macaroni penguins and steered close to short to revisit their hillside colony.

By dinner time on this mid-November Monday at the bottom of the world, Pamelia and I were back on the Akademik Sergey Vavilov, once again energized and exhausted and exhilarated. We had been phenomenally fortunate over the previous few days, thanks in no small part to the efforts of the One Ocean Expedition team and the Russian captain and crew. Visitors to South Georgia Island—and there aren't that many of them—sometimes are able to go ashore only once or twice (or not at all) because of waves, weather and breeding-season restrictions. We had gone ashore at an unheard-of seven spots on the island.  Seven. All of them unforgettable. 

Let by Mark Carwardine, the renowned British wildlife photographer, zoologist, conservationist and writer who had set up this entire trip, we and our fellow adventurers raised glasses of champagne in a toast to all we had seen. And to the final, crowning destination ahead.

"Next stop, Antarctica," said Mark. . —Craig Neff and Pamelia Markwood

Bats at the Mine Hill Reserve

Circumstances have been keeping Pamelia, Rocky and me away from home this winter, but not from exploring—in this case the Mine Hill Reserve in Roxbury, Connecticut. The abandoned iron-mine shafts there have become one of the state's largest bat hibernation sites.

This mine shaft is caged in to keep people out but allow bats to come and go freely.

Though white-nose syndrome (a disease caused by a deadly fungus) has devasted bat populations in 25 states and five Canadian provinces since it first appeared in New York State in February 2006, Mine Hill's tunnels still host thousands of little brown, big brown, northern long-eared and pipistrelle bats (see photos below) in a dark, moist, 50- to 55-degree environment from fall to spring. Mine Hill is what biologists call a hibernaculum, or a place to hibernate. Roxbury has protected it through its highly successful land trust. 

Little brown bats belong to a genus called Myotis, meaning "mouse-eared bat." They're sometimes known as little brown myotises. Their population has been hit hard from white-nose syndrome.

Big brown bats are one of the bat species that catch insects with their wing membranes and then shovel the insects into their mouths.

Northern long-eared bats are now listed as a threatened species because of the impact of white-nose syndrome.

The pipipstrelle is a small bat that can eat as many as 3,000 insects in a night.

Scientists have made progress in finding a way to combat white-nose syndrome, but bat numbers continue to shrink. Too many humans still think of bats as scary rather than magnificent, as threats rather than threatened. Bats control insect populations naturally, unlike insecticides, and they're mammals, like us. In fact, they've been around in their present form longer than we have; the oldest bat fossils date back more than 50 million years.   

The history of Mine Hill is interesting too. In Mine Hill's heyday, in the mid-19th century, iron was extracted from the mineral siderite (the rock on the far left in Pamelia's hand in the photo below) by immigrant workers from Europe. The mine was later a source of granite, some of which was used on the 59th St. Bridge and Grand Central in New York.

These days Mine Hill's trails, groves of mountain laurel and impressive rock formations attract hikers, nature lovers and history buffs. As you can learn from its extremely well-done informational signage, Mine Hill is fascinating place for humans as well as bats.

The siderite (far left) was a source of Mine Hill's iron. 

Rocky and I checked out some of the rock formations.

Pamelia and I enjoyed Mine Hill's longest hiking trail.

Rocky did too.


Have you visited an interesting nature reserve or park recently? Or—perhaps more important—seen any bats in the last year?

From Our Mailbag...

Following our latest Facebook posts on bobcats, off-course migrant birds showing up far outside their normal geographic range (including a black-throated sparrow photographed far up the coast of Maine), long-tailed-ducks, the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge standoff in Oregon and other subjects, our virtual mailbag overflowed this week with more than 1,000 of your comments and contributions (thank you—keep them coming!). Many of you sent photos of bobcats and birds you've seen, and artist Laurie Rothberg shared a watercolor she painted based on our northern-harrier photo from the Malheur refuge. Among the bird sightings you reported were a horned lark and a mountain chickadee, which a lot of people have never seen, so I'm putting up shots of them below. Enjoy! 

(The horned lark was photographed in South Dakota by Kathy Zimmerman; the mountain chickadee shot was taken in New Mexico by an unnamed photographer and shared on Wikipedia.) 


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Here are Laurie Rothberg's northern harrier painting...

...and the photo that inspired it. We took this picture at the visitors' center at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.

Kathy Zimmerman's horned lark photo, taken in South Dakota.

A mountain chickadee photographed in New Mexico.