Young Ones at Play

For the adult bear, life is mostly serious and solitary. Adult bears really do play with each other; they just seem to tolerate other bears when food is plentiful. The juvenile bears, however, are another story…….

We watched these two young bears wrestling and playing with each other all morning.



The two juvenile bears walked from across the creek to check out what this adult bear was eating. It was unclear what these two young bears relationship with this adult female was. Perhaps she was their mother, and they had been kicked out earlier this year…..There was no indication that the adult bear was protective or defensive about the two younger ones.
 
The young bears quickly lost interest in the other bear’s food, and went back to their play.


The young bears ambled over to the driftwood pile just behind us and continued to wrestle……

At times they even looked like they were dancing. : )

Of course, this kind of play is practice for the young bears for when they might need to really fight.

We had been able to watch at least 8 different bears interacting in all sorts of ways. We were, at one time, surrounded by bears……across the creek, in the creek, down stream from us, up stream from us, and behind us in the drift wood. The bears really did not seem to notice us…or to mind us if they did notice. At Hallo Bay, the bears have not been hunted or fed. To them, we humans are neither threat nor resource. We hold no interest to these creatures who, at the top of their food chain, just go about doing whatever they want.

 

We were not in the least bit disappointed when our guide, who had been in radio contact with the bush pilot, announced that the plane had been fogged in back in Homer and our return flight would be delayed about an hour.     ;– )   We would get one more hour than we had planned on to be in the company of these amazing creatures.