Today’s is a short early post, firstly because not much has happened since yesterday, apart from Sarah’s beartastic experience and secondly because I’ve got to leave early for my bear watching experience and I’m almost too excited to type!

Sarah’s trip to watch Brown Bears could not have gone any better. I will describe the experience in more detail tomorrow when I have witnessed it first hand. Suffice it to say Sarah saw 18 bears in total, including 7 cubs! The cubs were so bold they were even banging on the sides of the hide.

As you can imagine Sarah took about a million photographs and so the selection below have been severely culled so as not to allow the bears to crash the site!

Hello Mrs. Bear

Bear with Female Cubs

Brown Bear

Male Cubs with Mother

Female Cub being cute

Male Bear Cubs

I spent the four hours she was away babysitting the dogs. Mabel hates having her pack broken up and spent the first three hours whining for her “mum”, although she did eventually calm down.

Today has been a lazy one. We have been for a longish walk in the forest. The experts here have assured us that as long as we are noisy as we walk the bears will stay well away. With the amount of weight I’m carrying it’s difficult not to be noisy! There are also a few wolves in the area, but they are apparently not a threat to humans. Sarah was much more excited about smaller creatures. She found the forest puddles full of tadpoles in July.

I have also spent another hour or so photographing birds, although no squirrel today. I got a White Backed Woodpecker (quite a rarity if I’ve identified it correctly)and a lovely Greenfinch. Bullfinches are here in there thousands and the bird I identified yesterday as a Snow Bunting, is in fat a Pied Flycatcher.

More beartastic photos tomorrow, with luck.

Greenfinch

Lovely Bullfinch

White Backed Woodpecker

Snowbunting? No a Pied Flycatcher you idiot!