Mother Grizzly and Cub

Early Saturday morning and I’m off for a photo excursion with friends Howie and Joanne. They’re back from Nova Scotia where they spend most of the summer. We decided to photograph some scenery and hopefully some wildflowers in the lower Kananaskis area, including the Highwood Pass. This is bear country, so I brought a telephoto lens, just in case.

Weather shifts quickly in the Rockies and by the time we reached our destination, it had clouded over and cooled down considerably. Not good for photographing scenery and as it turns out, we were a little early in the season for the wildflowers.

Fortune smiled on us and we quickly spotted a mother grizzly and her cub, grazing along the side of the highway.

Momma Bear looked very similar to the bear I had photographed in the same area almost two weeks ago. You can compare for yourself by looking at my earlier blog “Bear Safari”. It seems unlikely that the lone bear  we saw then was a mother; they’re not inclined to leave the little ones unattended.

This one’s definitely a Mom, accompanied by a young cub. Grizzly sows have litters in alternate years, beginning at about 7 years of age. Grizzlies mate in June or July and the sow gives birth sometime between January and March while still asleep in the den. Litters consist of 1 to 4 cubs who nurse and grow while their mother continues to sleep. They emerge from the den in April or May. The sow and her cubs will typically den together the following winter, before the cubs venture out on their own.

Here’s the little one, poking around in search of the most succulent grasses and wildflowers. Grizzlies have a taste for dandelions and this pair was taking advantage of this year’s crop.

I feel fortunate to have seen bears on three occasions already this summer. Grizzlies are not very common (they estimate 500-700 in Alberta), so it’s a treat to see them.