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. :)