Polar Bear Moms and Cubs Days 7 through 10. 2015

Day 7:

Out to Fletcher lake again to look for tracks. The trackers still haven’t seen triplets or even tracks of triplets yet this year. No bears today. We saw some tracks on Fletcher lake. The mom and twins left yesterday and have already walked out of range.

Day 8:

No bears. We sat in the van all day. Amazing northern lights that night! My best northern lights images to date so far.

Day 9:

They found a mom and twins south of Lovett lake. We arrived there at 2p.m. When we got there, a baby was standing on mom’s back as mom was standing. That is one of my images that I am looking to get but unfortunately by the time we set up we missed it. It was really warm. -6 to -8 degrees. There was no wind and we had a heat shimmer for the first two hours. A heat shimmer occurs when the temperature warms up and the warm air hits the cold air just above the ground. The result is images that lack definition. It is very frustrating. All of our images were soft. As it got colder and the wind picked up a bit, the images got sharper and sharper.  By the end of the day the images were really sharp and the light was fantastic!

Day 10:

We drove out to Fletcher lake again waiting to hear from the trackers. Mom and cubs had already gone 10 or 15 miles and were already out of range. We drove around Fletcher a bit, but didn’t see any tracks, so then drove out to Lovett lake. We all checked out the polar bear den, then called it a day and drove back to the lodge.

 And that's it for another trip to Wapusk National Park. I just got home. This year I was only able to get on to the internet three times over the past ten days so I am a little behind. My polar bear and northern lights images can be seen on my website.

My next safari isn't until June. I will be photographing puffins and horses in Iceland, then on to France to photograph Camargue Horses.