Thornton Creek 2012

Hi Everyone, Well, it's that time of the year again when we head over to the west coast of Vancouver Island for the annual black bear photographic extravaganza at Thornton Creek near Ucluelet. It was a slow start to the day as my family and I arrived about an hour too late to catch the local bears for their morning meal. There were already a lot of people on site with several paparazzi present. What really blew me away was all of the very young children that some of the families had brought along. As I have mentioned before it is definetly not the place for small children especially with the bears being so close and coming from unexpected directions. I managed to find a few of the local camera guys from Nanaimo and had a nice chat while we photographed the dippers along the creek and waited for more bears to arrive. Sometime between 2:00pm and 2:30pm the first bear to arrive was what appeared to be a yearling. It was a bit bigger than a cub but you could still tell that it was not fully grown. It spent most of its time up near the waterfall at Thornton Creek and made several deliberate circles in that area before moving down stream towards the mouth. The next bear to arrive was much bigger and looked almost as wide as it was long. At first I thought it might have been a male but on second thought, it may have been the sow that had originally produced the younger bear that we had seen earlier. This bear was not concerned about humans at all and proceded to feed right under everyone's feet below the wooden deck. The final two bears to arrive appeared near the mouth of the creek on the side where everyone had parked their cars. We would have never known they were there if it wasn't for the barking dog that someone had brought along. The dog had been locked up in a camper and warned us loudly of the bears presence. Although it was quite wet and rained the whole time everyone had a great day. I hope to be having more entries in the blog now that the weather and season has changed. Hopefully we will have more luck with the owls now that raptor season is upon us. Stay tuned for further entries in the near future. Take care and good light, Steve