Thursday, December 20, 2012

Feast

I've been sifting through our trail camera photos, trying to pick out the best ones to share, as well as identify those that detail animal behavior. We captured a few interesting events-- bears rubbing on trees and chasing after fish in the stream, flocks of crows appearing and disappearing just as quickly-- but since we're right in the middle of the holiday season, it seemed fitting to talk about feasts! When salmon are plentiful, bears will high-grade salmon, eating only the energy rich, fatty parts of the fish: the skin, roe, and brains. When salmon decrease in numbers, however, a bear will make good work of a salmon carcass, eating everything it can.

Eagles, too, will eat as much of a salmon as possible, but unlike bears, a single salmon carcass can feed several eagles. I put these two videos together from some of the trail camera photos Jenn and I collected this autumn. Both of these videos are a series of still images that were captured one after another, and are played back-to-back like a film. We captured these images on cameras we had near Herman Creek, an area that sees a large run of Chum salmon in early autumn. Both of the videos are constructed from images captured toward the end of the Chum run on Herman Creek, at a time when salmon availability is lower.

This brown bear found the salmon carcass we had in front of our camera, and decided to make a meal of it. He didn't leave much in the way of scraps!


Nearby, a group of eagles found another chum salmon carcass we had in front of a different camera, and fed on it, too!


We hope you enjoy your holiday feasts as much as these guys did. :)

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