Fine dining in the woods

Kananaskis Black bear in Buffalo berries - © Christopher Martin-0907-3

This summer’s weather – rain and sunshine in a daily tug-of-war – has been a perfect gardener for the wild Buffalo berries.  These have ripened over the past week or two and are drawing in the bears throughout Kananaskis.  This Black bear made it easy for me to find him when he sauntered across the road a couple of hundred metres in front of me.  I pulled up to find him standing up in the middle of a patch feasting on the berries.

Kananaskis Black bear in Buffalo berries - © Christopher Martin-0908

They are a great source of calories for the bears so it is wonderful to see so much fruit this year.  Some years are not nearly as abundant and it seemed like that was not lost on this beautiful bear.  He appeared to be relishing almost every bite.  The berries stretched back into the forest and he slowly made his way further back as he ate.  I lost sight of him shortly after these pictures but could see branches bend and hear the odd one crack for several more minutes before he vanished back into the wilderness as they often do.

Kananaskis Black bear in Buffalo berries - © Christopher Martin-0915

10 responses

  1. Pingback: A smiling Grizzly in Kananaskis | Christopher Martin Photography

  2. Pingback: Fine dining in the woods | menschundkulturblog

  3. Our Bumble

    We went looking for bears in Finland but no such luck. Thanks for sharing, at least I get to see a bear through your photos. Great shot x

    August 4, 2016 at 2:59 pm

  4. Perfect opportunity and I love how he’s posed between the trees. I saw parks warnings about an abundance of bears due to the bumper crop of berries so hope you get more.

    August 4, 2016 at 10:17 am

  5. Beautiful bear, w/ shinny black coat. He looks very healthy and content! Thx.

    August 3, 2016 at 11:10 am

  6. Anonymous

    Beautiful nature in action! Thanks for capturing these photos!

    August 3, 2016 at 9:22 am

  7. Animals do not need to be taught the 10% rule of foraging. ”Take only 10% and move on, guarantees regrowth and food for all.” I just moved from a spot in northern Michigan where the black bear are becoming very abundant. They walk the streets of town as if they lived there. Silly bears. Thank you for sharing your passion. ren

    August 3, 2016 at 5:54 am

  8. Wonderful photographs. Good news that the Bears in your area will be well fed this year.

    August 3, 2016 at 5:27 am

  9. How wonderful, thanks for sharing this amazing creature with us.

    August 3, 2016 at 4:45 am

  10. Amazing! You are a lucky guy, you have had possibilities to see this cute bear and eating berries.
    We have bears here in Finland, but we have never seen one. We have spent light nights in forests near the Russian border wanting to see a bear, bur never succeeded.

    August 3, 2016 at 4:30 am

Your comments are truly appreciated - thank you for visiting.

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.