Another Summer In Banff

Another summer has already come and gone in Banff National Park and once again I've failed miserably to blog as much as I'd hoped.

This was my third summer in the Canadian Rockies but unfortunately my least active by far. I didn't manage to get out hiking or photographing as much as I'd planned. Every week I worked full time at the store, and on one of my days off I ran a stall at the farmer's market. Eventually, after a lot of saving, I was able to move into my own apartment.

My girlfriend has been visiting for the past two weeks so I managed to get away from work and finally take some photos. We were lucky enough to watch an amazing display of the northern lights and I was finally able to get some shots of this natural phenomenon that I've been hoping to photograph for years now.

I'm going to try and go shooting as much as possible this month to make up for what I've missed. I've been out a few times already this week, and with the elk rut in full swing, I'm hoping to get some nice images of this spectacular event.


Here's a selection of photographs from this summer, including some new panoramas taken last week:

(click on an image to enlarge)

The northern lights reflected on Lake Minnewanka, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Sunrise at Buller Pond, Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada

 

Autumn aspens at Hillsdale Meadows, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Morant's Curve along the Bow Valley Parkway, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Grizzly 64 and her three new cubs take a stroll at sunrise, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Faint northern lights in the skies over Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Bull moose in autumn colours, Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada

Fireweed at Bow Lake, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Grizzly bear cub, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

A grey wolf pup born this spring, Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, Canada

Grizzly bear triplets born this spring, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Autumn in Moose Meadows, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

I'm hoping that in the next couple of weeks or so, I'm able to get enough photos of the elk rut to put together another blog post by the end of the month.


All photographs are available to purchase. Please send me a message via my website if you have any questions.

Thanks for reading,

Cai

June In The Rockies

Hello everyone,

So it looks like my 'one blog post a week' plan has already failed miserably! I apologize for the lack of posts recently, but my time has been spent looking for a job as well as looking for bears and other wildlife.

After returning to Canada nearly two months ago, I've finally decided to get a job so that the basic existence that I've been living, can finally come to an end. I start training in Monod's, an outdoor store, on Monday and I'm going to have to get used to a productive routine again after over a year without working. I'm also very fortunate that my new manager has kindly organized my shifts so that I still have every morning free to photograph.


The last few weeks have been pretty amazing for me. I've spent a lot of time looking for a 22 year old grizzly bear and her three newborn cubs. Unfortunately, I've only managed to spot her once and didn't manage to get any photographs. However, I had a lot of luck with other wildlife in June. I finally had a couple of wolf encounters which is what I'd been hoping for this spring. Only one of these encounters yielded a photograph but it just happens to be my favourite wolf shot to date.

'Blizzard', a two-year old female wolf - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

It had been almost exactly one year to the day that I encountered 'Blizzard' last. To see her again and spent twenty minutes photographing her was one of then nicest feeling I've had in a long time. It's so great to see that she's still surviving and looking healthy as ever!

This recent wolf photo is a new favourite of mine, but I've also managed to photograph a lot of other amazing animals over the last few weeks.

Here's a few of my top images from the last month...

(click on an image to enlarge)

Black bear cub in a tree - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Pileated woodpecker chicks - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Bighorn sheep ram - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Grizzly bear grazing - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Subadult grizzly bear in fresh spring snow - Kananaskis, Alberta, Canada

Large male grizzly bear - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Beaver eating along riverbank - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Great blue heron - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Black bear resting - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Black bear cub in a tree - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Pileated woodpecker feeding her chicks - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Bighorn sheep ram overlooking Medicine Lake - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

Wet black bear - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Cinnamon black bear sow and cub - Jasper National Park, Alberta, Canada

July isn't considered a great month for wildlife photography, so I won't be getting out to shoot as much this month. I'm going to focus on work for a while and I've also got my summer stall to run at the Banff farmer's market every Wednesday. The recent postal strike here in Canada meant that I had very limited stock for the first market day of the summer. The wind and rain didn't help the situation either! I'm praying for blue skies next Wednesday and hopefully things will pick up.

If you're in Banff this summer, come along to the market and say hello! I also have a 'Save Banff's Wildlife' petition with me on the stall which I will be sending to Parks Canada, CP Rail and local MP Mr Blake Richards. Hopefully it will help put them under pressure to do something about the wildlife mortality rate here in Banff as well as spread awareness of the issue.


I've recently opened an account on the popular photo sharing website '500px'. You can view a selection of my most popular photos from around the world as well as vote for which are your favourites.


All photographs are available to purchase. Please send me a message via my website if you have any questions.

Thank you for reading,

Cai

The Grizzly And The Sheep

I've been meaning to write a new post for quite some time now, so apologies for the delay. The last two weeks have been pretty busy for me, and the lack of sleep is really starting to take it's toll!

However, I've had so many amazing experiences since being back in the Rockies, that it's all been worthwhile. I think that in the last six weeks, I've taken better photographs than I did in my entire first year in Canada! Next weeks post will include some of these favourites.


Today's post is about an incredibly rare encounter I had a couple of weeks back. I was out early one morning looking for bears with friend and master of Canadian wildlife photography, John E. Marriott. John's many years of searching for wildlife in the mountains have resulted in an amazing ability to spot animals. I used to think I was good at this, but now I'm not so sure. I dread to think of how many lynx or cougars I've driven past over the last few years, without even realizing they were there.

After a few hours of driving around without seeing anything at all, I was saying something to John about how our luck would change soon and that we would see something amazing one of these days. As soon as I finished my sentence, he stopped the car suddenly and pointed into the trees at the side of the road. I looked up and saw one of the biggest grizzly bears I've ever seen staring down at us from the top of a ridge.

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Grizzly bear on a bighorn sheep carcass - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

The bear had just stumbled upon the remains of a bighorn sheep when John spotted him. I'm not sure what killed the sheep, but this early in the year, it was a great find for a hungry bear. As we started taking some photos, the bear put it's head inside the carcass and to our surprise, pulled out an unborn lamb foetus!

Grizzly bear with lamb foetus - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

I've heard of a similar sighting in Banff National Park once before, which took place over twenty years ago, but I never thought that I would have the pleasure of witnessing this raw act of nature myself. The umbilical cord was still attached to the lamb and I was able to snap a few frames before the bear turned away from us and lay down to eat his snack.

After he ate the foetus, which only took him about five minutes, the grizzly returned to the carcass and began feeding on the sheep. I've only seen a bear on a carcass once before this and it was quite a distance away. To watch this from just a few meters away was unbelievable.

Grizzly bear feeding on the bighorn sheep - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Look at the size of this grizzly! - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

After feeding on the sheep for another few minutes, the bear decided that it had eaten enough so he left. John and I returned to the carcass several times over the next week but didn't see this monster of a bear again. I fact, we didn't see any other bears anywhere near the carcass which was a surprise. There were no ravens or magpies either which are usually the first to show up on a kill. Then one day the carcass was gone! Only the hide remained. The head and all the meat had vanished overnight, and we had no idea what had eaten it.

About two weeks later, I was browsing through some wildlife photographs on facebook when I saw a photo of a wolf standing over the very same sheep carcass. It was great to finally find out what had happened to the rest of the meat, but I couldn't help feel disheartened that I had missed the wolf. I still hadn't seen a wolf since returning to Canada and I was craving an encounter badly!

Luckily for me, the last week has been kind to me with not one, but two separate wolf encounters. Only one of these encounter yielded a photograph which I'm pleased with and I will be posting that in next weeks post along with some of my other recent favourites.


Unfortunately, I've very nearly run out of money now so I won't be shooting as much over the next few weeks. My main priority now is getting everything set up for my summer market stall which starts at the end of the month. I'm so worried that this postal strike is going to affect the time it takes for my card mounts to arrive from the states. Fingers crossed that I can get everything ready in time!

If you are visiting Banff this summer, don't forget to drop by the market to say hi. I will be selling prints there every Wednesday throughout the summer.

I will also have a petition with me for people to sign. I will be sending copies to Parks Canada as well as Canadian Pacific Railway to show them how many people are unhappy with the animal mortalities along the train tracks in Banff National Park, and with how little is being done to prevent these needless deaths.

If you haven't done so already, I would really appreciate it if you could send a few e-mails to Parks Canada and CPR explaining that this is an unacceptable problem in our protected parks. The relevant contact details can be found in my last blog post 'Another Banff Grizzly Dies'. Please take a few minutes to help make a difference.

Thank you!


Cai


To see more of my work, don't forget to visit my website at www.toothandclawphotography.com

Another Banff Grizzly Killed

Yesterday morning, I was getting ready to write a new blog post about all the wonderful bears I've seen over the past week. Unfortunately, the news of bear deaths in the Rockies began circulating and my plans changed. I realized that even though I had great luck finding bears over the weekend, the local grizzly bear population took a huge hit.

The first news I received yesterday came from a friend and fellow photographer, Brandon T. Brown. Brandon had spent Sunday evening photographing a sow grizzly with her newborn cubs. He returned to the same location yesterday morning to find one of the cubs lying dead at the side of the road. The sow was lying on a ridge above, looking down at the body and there was no sign of the second cub anywhere either.

Male bears will often kill and eat cubs, but for now, it's unclear what happened to this bear family. If it was a natural death at the hands of another bear, even though it's very sad, at least it was nature taking it's course. However, from looking at the way people drive around here, it could easily have been a vehicle that struck and killed these cubs. I'm always shocked at how fast people drive out here, especially in the National Parks!

And if this news wasn't already bad enough, I then went on to read a newspaper article about ANOTHER grizzly that was killed along the train tracks near Lake Louise on Saturday! This bear was killed whilst eating grain on the tracks and she leaves behind two orphaned cubs, both yearlings (one year old).

On Friday morning, I was out looking for bears to photograph with another friend and fellow photographer, John E. Marriott. We spotted a grizzly bear family off the side of the highway in Lake Louise and were able to photograph them for about half an hour. The cubs we found are very likely to be the ones that suffered the loss of their mother the following day. John and I must have been the last people to see this family before the train hit.

The sow grizzly (and the now orphaned cubs) that was killed by a CP train this weekend (the day after I took this photo) - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

These cubs have almost no chance of surviving the summer by themselves as they were completely dependent on their mother. When these cubs die, there will be five less grizzlies in Alberta, all due to the events of one weekend. I keep reminding myself that our grizzly bears are supposed to be a protected endangered species, yet every other week it seems I'm reading about their deaths on our roads and especially along the railway lines in Banff!

The sow grizzly walking with one of her cubs through the snow - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

One of the cubs looks for some attention - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Between 1980 and 2008 the roads and railways combined slaughtered some 20,000 to 30,000 (1,000 to 1,500 annually) animals the size of a wolverine or larger in the four Rocky Mountain national parks (Banff, Kootenay, Yoho, Jasper), all part of a UNESCO world heritage site! Since 2000, trains have killed 13 grizzly bears in Banff National Park that we know of, including 11 reproducing females. Without their mothers' care, none of the five cubs orphaned by these railway deaths have survived to adulthood in the park.

This problem is not going to go away. This week, we saw up to five trains a day shooting through the national park at 90km per hour at least. Parks Canada claim that they are doing great conservation work here in Banff, but the truth is, nowhere near enough is being done to tackle this issue!

Every time I step onto the train tracks in Banff, I see grain spilled all over the place. The bears love to eat grain and that is why so many of them are hit by the trains. How hard can it be to stop grain falling from a train carriage really?! Canadian Pacific (who made $19 billion profit from 1999 to 2008!) has put a measly $1 million aside to help deal with bear mortality in our national parks, but that was months ago and so far, I'm not sure any of that money has been put to use.

One of the now orphaned cubs, playing with it's mother the day before her death - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

The sow grizzly that was killed on Saturday - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

The orphaned grizzly cubs who are not likely to survive the summer without their mothers' care - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

WHAT CAN YOU DO TO HELP?

Well to start with, I'm going to write an e-mail to some Parks Canada officials telling them that this is unacceptable and very disappointing! I urge you to please do the same. If we all stand together on this and put them under pressure to make a difference, then we might finally start to see some results.

The first person to write to is Dave Cairns at:     Dave.Cairns@pc.gc.ca  

and send the same letter to:     Pam.Veinotte@pc.gc.ca 


Please try to keep your letter short (less than 150 words is preferable) and remain polite and respectful.


I will also write to Mr Fred Green, president and CEO of CP at:    community_connect@cpr.ca

and to our local MP, Mr Blake Richards at:    blake@blakerichards.ca

as well as the federal Minister of the Environment, Peter Kent at:     kentp@parl.gc.ca


If you would like to learn more about what is REALLY going on in our national parks, you should read my friend Peter Dettling's new book 'The Will Of The Land'.

Peter has spent many years photographing wildlife in the Rocky Mountain parks and he has gathered lots of data and statistics on how the parks are run. This book will show you the ugly truth behind what's really going on in our national parks.


Well, this weeks post has been a sad one, but if there's a chance we can make something good happen because of this incident, then we should try our best. I'm hoping to get this post published on the cover of Banff's local newspaper next week, along with a few photos, in a bid to make some more of the locals aware of what's going on right on their doorsteps!

Now please, start writing those letters!

Thank you,

Cai


(The statistic in this post were taken from Peter Dettling's website at www.terramagica.ca)

Back To The Rockies

It's been just over a week since my last post so it's time for an update as promised.

I've decided not to photograph anything today so that I can try to catch up on some much needed sleep! My 4am starts over the last few days have taken their toll on me and I feel like I need a day off to relax and edit some photos.


Since arriving back in Canada last Thursday, my luck has been fluctuating quite a bit. For example, when I arrived last Thursday I was taken for a drive almost straight away. I hadn't been in the country for more than three hours when a wild lynx crossed the road ahead of us! Before it disappeared into the trees it paused and looked back at us over it's shoulder, almost as if to say 'welcome back'.

This incredible encounter was shortly followed by an hour of grizzly bear photography. We found a beautiful looking bear as we were heading home and I managed to get some great shots of him as he dug for roots in the rain. What a great start to another year in the Canadian Rockies!

However, the last few days have been tough. I've spent a lot of time out looking for bears with a friend of mine, and we've had no luck whatsoever. We even found a recently killed deer and returned to it the following morning to see if there was something feeding on it. To our surprise, the whole carcass had been eaten during the night and there was no sign of any predators anywhere nearby. The lack of bears and wolves meant that we turned out attention to photographing other animals such as deer and birds.
This paid off. Over the last few days I've taken some images that I'm really pleased with. I'm still itching to see a wolf sometime soon, but at least we made something out of a bad situation.

Here are a few of my favourites from the last week...

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Grizzly bear stroll - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Snowy coyote - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Western tanager - Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada

Male grizzly bear - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Bighorn sheep silhouette - Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada

Black bear family - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Young grizzly bear - Kootenay National Park, British Columbia, Canada

Misty morning coyote - Canmore, Alberta, Canada

Cow moose chewing - Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada

Wet grizzly bear - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Cute western tanager - Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada

Mount Temple grizzly bear - Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada

Spray Lake panorama - Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada

Misty morning - Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada

Deer silhouette - Kananaskis Country, Alberta, Canada

Next week it's time to start looking for a job so I don't know if I will be out shooting as much. I will try to post another update sometime next week though.


To see more of my work, don't forget to visit my website at www.toothandclawphotography.com

You can also follow me on twitter and facebook.

Facebook - Cai Priestley Photography

Twitter - Cai Priestley


All photographs are available to purchase. Please send me a message via my website if you have any questions.

Thank you for reading,

Cai