Tundra Wildlife

On the first day of August of this year, we headed north into Manitoba, Canada all the way up to Churchill on the Hudson Bay with a stop or two along the way. It was the furthest north we had been on our planet (other than a stop in Iceland's Keflavik Airport) since December of 2013 (which coincidentally was ALSO Iceland but for a real vacation there). Our most important priority for this trip was pretty simple: see some polar bears in the wild in the last stop on the trip in Churchill. 

We succeeded. Four days in Churchill, six polar bears. Mission accomplished. 

We've been on enough nature trips in our lives to know that when it comes to truly wild wildlife, there are no guarantees. But I have to say if we hadn't seen any white bears on this trip, I think we would have considered the whole excursion a failure. That attitude may have been a little unfair to our tour operator of choice and even ourselves and that's because there were other experiences that were worthwhile other than seeing polar bears, including finding other mammals and birds in the Great White North that were thrilling in their own way. 

Those other species are blog-worthy but I still would have declared the trip a failure (again...harsh...I know) if we hadn't found polar bears. So in the spirit of blog-worthiness, I thought it would be worthwhile spotlighting what other wildlife we saw on our Canada 2026 trip. I'm going to do that through three posts and, truth be told, the first two will be mostly a photo dump at some point (and yes, that means the last one will be different). 

I'm going to start those three posts on our last full day of the trip in Churchill.

Three Hudsonian godwits. Churchill Wildlife Management Area.

The last day of our four days in Churchill was spent inside the Churchill Wildlife Management Area, a slice of tundra adjacent to Wapusk National Park, a Parks Canada property. This is the spot to find polar bears in August and it worked. We found five in our six hours that day looking out the windows of a Tundra Buggy, a sort of giant, jacked-up school bus designed to off-road within the Management Area to maximize wildlife viewing. Most of our day while we were driving was spent looking through two giant front windows shown in the cover photo of this post.

And yes, we were driving over tundra. Maybe this is the time to talk about life on tundra.

Here's the thing: nothing much really lives on the tundra, the top layer of soil and vegetation that supports life up north. The tundra (apparently it's a Russian word and it's for sure cold in Russia) sit on top of the permafrost, a strata of the Earth that is perpetually frozen, although these days (and in the future) the reality of permafrost will cease to exist more and more. 

There is vegetation on the tundra, but think small. Moss. Lichens. Grasses. Shrubs. The odd flowers like the purple-pink fireweed. Maybe some single trees or small stands of trees together but again, think small. Like really small. Like low to the ground. Sure there are trees there but if there's a single tree anywhere around, it's a flag tree, a tree subject to maximum wind effect, which usually causes all the branches on a tree to grow on one side in the direction of the prevailing wind. Our tundra buggy driver joked that in Churchill you need a minimum of two trees to make a Christmas tree during the holiday season.

Considering all that, and pretty well knowing that we had a shot at polar bear or two (or five!), our sights for other animals were set low. I mean if there's no vegetation, then there's no life. African safari this was not.

Churchill tundra. Not in the Wildlife Management Area (can't get this close to the ground in there).

Species spotting proved to be hard work on the tundra. There's just not a lot out there, a reflection of just how inhospitable this environment really is. Need to grow to a pretty good size? You really need some pretty good sized food or a whole lot of it and generally speaking there's just not a lot to eat unless you are a polar bear (which eat seals when they are on the frozen ice) and caribou, which eat...get this...caribou lichen. And lichen there is aplenty on the tundra. 

We did manage to find some new birds for our life list, including some godwits, snow geese and golden-plovers, and we got a good look at some red foxes with mother and kits at play and sometimes trying in vain to hunt the nearby golden-plovers and in one case successfully catching a vole. I can see foxes (or find fox poop) in our driveway at certain times of the year so I'm not going to be super excited about any species of fox I can find in Churchill. 

Well, except maybe an arctic fox. We did not see an arctic fox.

Red foxes and American golden-plovers.

But in our six or so hours roaming around the Management Area in our Tundra Buggy, we did find a couple of signature wildlife experiences worth remembering and sharing. And sure enough, and again reflecting the scarcity of mammals out on the tundra, most of our non-polar bear excitement came while finding things with wings. Things with wings can migrate easier than things without wings.

Here's what we found that I will remember.

Willow Ptarmigan

If you had asked me which bird I wanted to see most of all before we set off on our Tundra Buggy journey, it would have been a ptarmigan. We'd seen a singular ptarmigan once before in Denali National Park in Alaska but I wanted more on this trip. These birds are a sort of dirty brown in the summer but turn completely white in winter to camouflage against the snow. We knew we'd be getting the dirty version of the bird at this time of year and that was going to have to be OK.

The flock of ptarmigans below (of which the one above was one) was the first wildlife we saw in the Management Area. 30 minutes in and we saw nothing but a few ptarmigans. No polar bears (yet) so even though I really wanted to see ptarmigans, seeing these birds without a giant white bear nearby was frustrating. Do we stop and look at these or just keep going? We stopped. 

This was, after all, part of what I wanted. To look at some birds that with the right light and imagination in non-winter, look pretty much like chickens.

Here's the astonishing thing about these birds, and I know this is not the first time I've written something like this on this blog...these things in summer are about impossible to see against the tundra floor. Seriously. Take a look at the photograph above. There are six ptarmigans in the picture above but it's not a sure thing. There may be more here and there or it may just be dead vegetation on the ground. On a mostly green floor, it's amazing that there's really much doubt about the number of brown birds there are in the view above.

Would these birds have been cooler in winter, all white on all white? Sure they would. But it was August and this encounter was pretty exciting, particularly because of the quantity all in one spot. I am not likely to come back this far north in the willow ptarmigan's range for a long, long while (although my travel habits sometimes surprise me) so it's likely this spotting will need to last me for a good amount of time.

Caribou

While it appears to be a matter of some online debate, caribou are often credited with the longest annual terrestrial migration. The numbers? About 1,500 miles annually and some herds number over 200,000 individuals. That's a lot of caribou.

Caribou migrations start as early as August and includes a range which covers part of Manitoba. We were in Manitoba in August and caribou live on the tundra. Cool! 

We saw one caribou.

Wrong place, wrong time. I don't really think that there are ever hundreds of thousands of caribou migrating through the Churchill Wildlife Management Area at any time of the year, let alone August. If there was a mammal species that I was hoping to see in the CWMA other than the polar bear, it was the caribou. We did it! One counts, right?

In many ways, caribou for us are the mammal equivalent of the ptarmigan. We'd only seen them once before and, like the ptarmigan, it was in Alaska's Denali National Park. They also blend in remarkably well with an environment which on the surface of things seems totally dissimilar in color from a caribou's coat. Nonetheless, the colors do blend into the tundra colors. 

Not much more to say on this one. There was only one and we saw it for probably less than five minutes. Exciting...but we need to move on.

Sandhill Crane

I don't have a lot of cranes on my bird life list. In fact, after visiting Churchill, I have just two on my list: some type of crowned crane (I'm not totally sure if I saw a grey or black crowned crane before) and the sandhill crane. Truth be told here, there are only 15 species of crane in the entire world.

We've flirted with seeing sandhill cranes in the past while also coming nowhere close to these birds. There is a large gathering (like a million) of these birds annually in Nebraska which we looked into when we sneaked into the northwest corner of Nebraska a few years ago. And there is another large population that winters in New Mexico just south of Albuquerque (I feel we will get here eventually). These birds migrate very south (like Florida and Mexico) in the winter so it's possible to see them in a lot of different places. But until Churchill...no sandhill cranes in person.

Our sandhill cranes were in the Wildlife Management Area were at a pretty good distance but we did see a few seconds of their famous dance. This is like the star activity of these birds. And by a few seconds and a pretty good distance, I really do mean that. We managed to see a couple of different groups of cranes but very fleeting. Still, pretty thrilling. Hopefully we'll see many more on a specific sandhill crane trek some other time. Maybe.

Arctic Tern

Who was impressed by that 1,500 mile annual caribou migration? It's OK if you were. It's a long distance. It's OK to be impressed.

But the caribou's got nothing on the Arctic tern. 1,500 miles? Child's play. For some reason, the Arctic tern has decided it has to breed in the north of the globe in the summer and spend the northern hemisphere winter all the way down on the other side of the planet in the Antarctic. How far do some Arctic terns travel in a year? Maybe as much as about 56,000 miles. Take that, caribou!

We've seen terns in the wild before. They are plentiful all over the planet including in the Forster's tern variety as near as the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland about an hour or so away from our house. But we'd never seen Arctic terns before. 

Like a lot of other species of tern out there, I'd wager that most people see terns and think gulls and then are surprised by how well put together terns are on a second look and decide they are not gulls at all. Whether this is true or not for anyone else besides me, I have no idea. But I am not interested in gulls and I am particularly interested in terns. Where gulls are ungainly and brash (not in a good way), terns are smooth and suave and are gorgeous flyers, able to hover on the wind without flapping and suddenly dive for food. Maybe it's just me but I like terns.

I spent a lot of time on our tundra day watching and photographing terns in flight after our lunch in the Tundra Buggy. Most efforts were fairly disappointing but I'm OK with the picture above. These birds really are some of the best to photograph on the wing with a camera like ours. I tried.

We also managed to see a very young Arctic tern in a nest. And by "in a nest", I really mean sort of loosely located in or around a pile of rocks, rarely standing still but with no boundaries to confine him or her, how can you blame it? It seemed to be getting fed. Our guide mentioned that this one was quite late in the season to be this size. It's got some serious flying to do in the very near future. Hopefully it made it.

Bald Eagle (although really short-eared owls)

I can be at a bald eagle nest in about 30 minutes if I leave my house at the right time of the day and week and I can pretty reliably find one or both eagles that live in the nest at most times of the year. If I'm at my parents' house, I can cut the time to a bald eagle nest in about half.

So given that introduction, it might be surprising that a bald eagle viewing would be in this post, right? Although to be honest, the picture above is about as good a picture of a bald eagle as I've ever taken. But it's also not the reason why I'm remembering our bald eagle encounter at the Churchill WMA.

We saw (I believe) one bald eagle in our time in the Management Area. We actually had two encounters with eagles that day but I'm fairly sure it was the same eagle both times. The second time we saw it, I got the photograph above. 

The first time we saw this same eagle, it was perched on a similar lone tree that also looked too light to support the eagle's weight (check out the bend in the tree on all these pics). But it had company. And the company was not friendly.

We see small birds chasing larger birds all the time when we are birdwatching. In the US, these larger birds are usually crows or hawks, although we've also seen blue jays making a ton of noise around owls. That Sunday out on the tundra, it was a pair of short-eared owls chasing this massive bald eagle, likely too close to the owls' nest which would have been somewhere nearby on the ground.

This whole thing lasted maybe a minute but these tiny little owls were aggressive and drove off the eagle in pretty short order. But considering I'd never seen a short-eared owl in my life before and that I'd never really been able to photograph a cool small bird chasing away a cool large bird (meaning NOT sparrows chasing crows or something like that), this brief look at a conflict on the tundra, which was literally the only drama we saw in six hours, is etched into my memory as an important part of our last day.

Once we left the tundra, our remaining time in Churchill was counted in hours. 4 p.m. dinner (not joking) reservation and then straight to the airport. The Wildlife Management Area was the highlight of this trip. For sure. Maybe. Probably. It's debatable. But polar bears and then a mix of other birds and mammals? Pretty hard to beat on this trip.

Snow goose. Another first-time bird species for me. Churchill Wildlife Management Area. 

Churchill

Every night at 10 o'clock in Churchill, Manitoba, a siren rings out across the downtown area. Time to think about calling it a night before darkness envelops the town. Before it gets dangerous. Before what pretty much every visitor in Churchill both comes to see and is acutely aware of as a threat when they walk around town, even in broad daylight.

Polar bears. The largest land predator alive on Earth today. Vicious and merciless hunters. These are no grizzlies or black bears. Get into a fight with a polar bear and you won't win. You'll be food. And the chance to see some polar bears in the wild is exactly why we went to Churchill earlier this month. There's really nowhere else in North America where you stand a chance of seeing these animals in the wild like Churchill. So we headed north.

We thought we'd skip the walking around town thing. Even in broad daylight. Well, mostly anyway. We made one trip to the Arctic Trading Company. We figured it was just on the block next to our hotel. What could possibly go wrong?

We've wanted to visit Churchill for years but it's complicated. We never could seem to fit it in. And I don't just mean into our schedule. I also mean into our budget. It's expensive to head all the way up to the Hudson Bay in northern Manitoba for a few days. And considering sightings of wild polar bears are in no way guaranteed, plopping down a ton of money per day for just the opportunity to get a glimpse of one of these gorgeous creatures is a tough thing to reckon with. I mean, it's also not like you go out looking for bears every day. Most organized tours have one day only really searching for white bears.

But last year, we figured enough was enough. We decided we'd look seriously at a trip to Churchill. We searched websites. We gathered recommendations where we could. We thought about what our priorities and budget would be. We weighed the risks of doing it ourselves vs. going with a tour operator. And after all that we took the plunge and booked a tour. 

Frontiers North. Canada's Big Five Safari. August 2 through August 10, 2026. Eight nights, but just three in Churchill. And of those three nights and the best part of four whole days, just one day would be in a spot where the bears frequently hang out in a Churchill summer. This had better pay off.

Polar bear trip, Churchill, Manitoba.

Maybe a few words about these bears and how to find them in the wild as a 21st century tourist is in order. 

Type "where to find polar bears in the wild" into an internet search engine and you'll likely get some useful tourism information. Like they only live in five countries in the world: the United States (northern Alaska); Russia; Greenland; Norway; and Canada. And it seems to me that the two most accessible places to find one in the wide open Arctic (or close to it) are Svalbard north of Norway (like way north actually) and Churchill, Canada. 

You also might find out based on your internet search that polar bears are the largest bear in the world. If you have ever seen a black bear in the wild, you likely saw a creature that tops out at about 500 pounds and six feet tall when standing. And yes, I recognize that the likelihood of finding a standing black bear right next to a tape measure is pretty slim. Grizzlies are a bit bigger: try 600 pounds and eight feet tall maximum.

Polar bears can weigh up to 1,200 pounds and can stand just a bit taller than the tallest grizzly. Polar bears are big. There are also just about 30,000 left in the wild. And that may be a high estimate. There are that many grizzlies in Alaska alone and there are almost 1,000,000 black bears in North America. Polar bears are rare in addition to big.

Bear skulls. From right: polar, grizzly, black. Parks Canada Visitor Centre, Churchill.

From a tourism perspective, the yearly polar bear life cycle is not exactly intuitive. I'd say most people probably assume the best time to visit Churchill for polar bear spotting is in the winter when it's snowy and icy and super cold. You know...white bears against a white landscape. But that's just not true.

From late November to May or so, you won't find many polar bears in and around Churchill or anywhere else on solid land in northern Canada. That's because during those months they are out on the frozen ice of the Hudson Bay (Churchill is on the shore of the Hudson Bay) or wherever else they happen to roam looking for seals to eat. Seals don't live on land during the winter. They live in the sea or on the ice and when they are in the water they breath through breathing holes that may or may not have a hungry polar bear waiting for a seal face to pop up for a breath.

Bear season in Churchill is in the fall, before the Bay freezes solid. Polar bears start gathering near the ice perimeter hoping that the frozen water can support their weight long enough for them to roam for months looking for some yummy seals. All told, there are about 900 or so polar bears around the western edge of the Hudson Bay in any given season. That doesn't mean all those bears are in Churchill, but it's a concentrated number close to human settlement like no other place on Earth.

We chose to visit in the summer, a time when there are fewer polar bears around the edges of the water but there are enough out there that seeing multiple polar bears in a single excursion is eminently possible. Polar bears don't hibernate. They have to be somewhere roaming around on land in the warmer months and one of those places is Churchill. We'd done enough research to know or hope or a little bit of both that we'd see a polar bear or two. Time to take a chance.

Polar Bear Holding Facility, Churchill. Capacity 28 polar bears. 30 day stay for wandering into town.

On day six of our nine day tour with Frontiers North, we hopped on a sixty or so seat prop plane at Winnipeg Airport, rode it to about 21,000 feet above sea level and headed north to Churchill. Two or so hours later, we landed. Time to see whether booking this tour was smart or if maybe our money could have been spent better elsewhere.

There are only two ways to get to Churchill, by the way: plane or train. There are no roads that lead from the rest of Canada or lower Manitoba or wherever else you might be in the Great White North to Churchill. Fly or train. Those are the options. Flying over a landscape of unevenly shaped pools of water scattered over what was becoming more and more like tundra as we flew north really emphasized the impossibility of constructing roads across Canada's wilderness. And that's not even considering repairing frost damage. 

Want to get to Churchill? Fly or train. Although I guess you could take a boat in the summer.

We were greeted at the airport by a polar bear safety sign. Never go beyond a polar bear alert warning sign. Never walk at night after 10:00. Always travel in groups and make noise. Always stay close to a vehicle or other refuge. Always remember bears can be in town any time of day. 

Welcome to Churchill.

We received our first in-person polar bear safety briefing at the site of a 1979 plane crash about 15 minutes after leaving the airport. The downed plane, now dubbed Miss Piggy, is still there completely intact out on the rocks of the tundra. We received our words of caution while we gazed at the plane's hull right after our driver walked around a little towards the plane clapping his hands to scare away any lurking polar bears.

What stuck with me from our briefing was if you see a polar bear and you are outside the bus, yell "BUS!" as loudly as possible and run for the bus as fast as you possibly can. There may have been some other stuff like don't walk beyond the signs or something like that but yell and run as fast as possible hit home.

Bears are dangerous. Point taken. Got that. It wouldn't be the last time we were warned. One of my favorite safety signs later in our time in Churchill said do not turn and run and do not play dead. Run like hell. Got it.

15 minutes after we arrived at Miss Piggy and before we even got back on the bus, we saw our first wild polar bear. Fortunately, it was at a good distance swimming at the edge of the Bay so nobody had to yell "BUS!" or run anywhere. 

Are you kidding me? 30 minutes into our time in Churchill with a good amount of anxiety about whether we would even see a single bear and we got our first sighting. This was going to be good.

Polar bear number one. In the Hudson Bay.

The next two days, we didn't see a single bear. 

OK, so truth be told, we weren't really looking for bears. I mean, we were, but not like in an organized group tour way. Sure we looked left and right every time we stepped outside the hotel and we remained super vigilant on our very brief walks around town (like to the Arctic Trading Company). And wherever we went on the tour bus, we looked left and right into the rocks and around the fireweed. But days two and three in Churchill...no bear sightings. Not a one.

Although, funnily (or maybe not so funnily) enough when we were headed back from the Arctic Trading Company, we heard some firecracker noises. Car backfiring? Gunshots? Nope and nope. Apparently, it was the bear patrol trying to get a polar bear in town back out to the tundra. The one time we walk by ourselves anywhere that's further than 25 feet away and we are on foot when a polar bear is in town in place with a full time population of less than 1,000 people (meaning very small). No more walks outside by ourselves. We'll wait for the tour bus to take us.

On day four, the same day we were set to leave town, we went looking for bears in a serious way in a serious ride.

Our Tundra Buggy. Churchill Wildlife Management Area.

Just east of Churchill, there is a Parks Canada property called Wapusk National Park. It sits along the western edge of the southern portion of Hudson Bay and houses the largest concentration of polar bear dens in the world. Wrapping Wapusk to the west and south is a tundra area called the Churchill Wildlife Management Area. The Wildlife Management Area was the final stop on our agenda in Churchill. If we saw bears here, we'd leave town happy. If we came up empty, there was no second chance. We'd be back in Winnipeg before the clock struck midnight and we'd likely never come back. Sure, we'd seen a bear. At a great distance swimming. That wasn't what we hoped for.

Our transport for the six hours we'd spend in the Wildlife Management Area was a Tundra Buggy, a boxy, all-white vehicle on jacked up tires with a back deck for polar bear watching. Picture a vehicle just a bit less aerodynamic than a school but with a deck attached to the back of the vehicle. Or you can just look at the picture above.

Indeed, a school bus was the inspiration for the Tundra Buggy. The first models were literally school busses with a fenced platform welded to the back of the bus which was accessible through the back exit door that we rarely ever used to use when we were kids. The current Tundra Buggies I'm sure are a lot more efficient and effective than those early vehicles, although the school bus feel still permeates the inside of the 2020s Buggies, right down to the windows which are unlatched on both sides and slid down to get fresh air. Or a clear view of polar bears for the Buggy occupants.

Polar bear number two. Churchill Wildlife Management Area.

It took us about 45 minutes to see our first polar bear. Not in the water swimming with his (or her) head barely above the surface of the Bay but on solid ground. Lying down in the distance, so far away that our camera struggled with the distance to get us a good picture. But this was it. This is what we came to see. Surely this would not be the only bear we'd find on our last day. A small thrill? Yep that about sums it up. Feeling vindicated but the bear didn't even stand up for crying out loud. We moved on in hopes of more.

We got it. But we'd have to wait about an hour and a half. And this one was running. Away from us. Fast. Possibly spooked by the giant rectangular white box with a bunch of excited humans inside. These bears can move and those strong back legs can power these big bodies across the landscape pretty rapidly. Once it had run a while, it turned, stood in profile and looked out and back towards our big white box long enough for me to take the picture below.

Two and a half hours. Two very distant white bears. That's about half our time gone.

Polar bear number three. Churchill Wildlife Management Area. 

The next sightings would be thrilling.

We'd end up with six polar bear sightings in our time in Churchill: one at that first safety briefing just by Miss Piggy and five more in the Wildlife Management Area. We haven't spent a lot of time in our lives looking for bears but we've done a few days here and there. Five in one day equals our best day ever in Sequoia National Park in California and six in one trip equals our best trip ever in Alaska. While that may not seem like a ton of bears on a vacation or even a day, we'll take it. If (and here's the catch) those are quality bear sightings.

Our afternoon bear sightings on our last day in Churchill definitely were of a higher quality. And they were polar bears which are rarer and take way more work than grizzlies or black bears. Polar bears are better. This was our best bear day ever.

One of the great things about the sequence of bear sightings we got on that last day is the bears we found were progressively closer to us which meant that each one gave us more to look at. You can see the difference in bear size between the two photographs above which stretched the zoom on our camera. Bear number two is definitely closer than bear number one.

Bear number six (the closest bear) is below. Now we are talking!

A few thoughts about bear number six. 

First, the view was terrific. This was a bear sighting we could take in without the use of the zoom lens on the camera, although we did that anyway. This was the best appreciation we would have of the size of a typical polar bear. This is a thick, muscled animal that you do not want to tangle with. I love the face as he's looking right over to our big white box on wheels.

Second, while we didn't intend to chase him away with our noise and extra large vehicle, we surely did in the end. We fully meant to just watch and take it all in and then leave the bear for someone else to discover (although I'm not sure there was anyone else out that day) but that didn't happen. The bear striding from his original spot again emphasized just how massive these bears are.

And third, the fact that this bear turned and yawned got us a great look at his signature long neck and massive jaws. This bear's mouth is gigantic. I guess it has to be because that's how he's going to capture seals when they surface at breathing time. The jaw has to be big enough to grab a full grown seal and pull it out of the water. 

Polar bears are generally solitary creatures. There's no hanging out as a family unit sipping a bottle or two of Coke at Christmas. The only time they really hang out with fellow polar bears is during mating season (which is NOT August) and if a mother is raising a cub or cubs. And that last one is why bear number six was our second best bear sighting.

Say hi to our mom and cub. Mom is on the right. The cub, which admittedly is not that much smaller than mom herself, is on the left. Mom is likely five plus years old. Her cub is likely about eight months old. The size similarity is more noticeable in the pictures below. Our guides for the day guessed that the cub is male, which explains the relatively similar bulk.

We spent about 10 minutes watching bear number six. We got about twice that long with our bear family duo, including a walk from where we first noticed them to a spot nearby to get a snack (likely of berries) before disappearing into the tundra greenery. And I really do mean disappearing. Once they had walked a bit into the fireweed and other stunted growths on top of the ground, you really couldn't see them at all. This is a big part of why they are so dangerous. Despite their size and their completely white fur, somehow they are about invisible even when there is no snow.

Cub leaves and mom follows.

Based on our wildlife watching experiences over the last 10 or so years, we've always been most satisfied with our looks at mammals or other creatures when there is some social interaction. One bear doesn't do that for us. And while we didn't get an extensive look at these two bears engaged with one another, the little bumps and nudges that they engaged in made a difference. It made it look like these two were in it together for each other and it was not just an every bear for him or herself situation like the others we saw. I like to think there was genuine affection and love exchanged between these two. Maybe I'm anthropomorphizing a bit much there. It was a privilege to follow these two for a bit more than a quarter of an hour.

One thing that I found remarkable about all five bears we found in the Wildlife Management Area was that they all knew we were there. They all looked straight at us for a while with the exception of our second bear that day (identified in this post as bear number three) who just took off running. Maybe it's stupid to note that an animal that uses its senses to survive in one of the harshest environments on Earth can notice a large vehicle that looks nothing like anything else for miles around. But it wasn't just the odd glance. The humans were to be watched and tracked and if we got too threatening, the bear was gone. Size matters. Big creatures don't like things bigger than them.

Before we arrived in Churchill, we'd seen pictures of polar bears walking right up to Tundra Buggies, putting their paws as high on the vehicle as possible and looking up at the humans looking down at them. I am sure that would have been incredible to see and hear and smell. That's not what we got. We'll have to be satisfied with what we found in 2026. And you know what? We didn't find nothing and we are satisfied. We got what we came for.

Single species wildlife watching trips are difficult. If you don't get that one thing you came to see, you are bound to be disappointed. We've never based a whole trip around one type of animal. We've had days where we were looking for one and only one bird or animal, but not a whole vacation. And to be frank, this wasn't a polar bear or bust trip; we actually did have other things we wanted to see that we felt pretty darned secure that we would see. But if we hadn't seen a polar bear in Churchill, this would have been a bust. There's no question about that. We left town knowing that wasn't the case and that felt good, even if we didn't get to smell polar bear breath because they were so tantalizingly close.

Polar bears are now added to our life list. They are proudly on that list with elephants and lions and kiwis and wolves and humpback whales and toucans and hippos and painted dogs and shoebills (definitely a one species day there) and a lot of other things.

Lots of big white butts and lots of looks over at the big white vehicle.

I don't know when the next time is that we will see an iconic animal in the wild for the first time. We certainly don't have the trip already scheduled or even penciled in right now. But when we get there, no matter what species of mammal, bird, reptile or whatever else it is we are looking for, that first sighting will be magical and thrilling, just like seeing our first polar bear was right after being scared to death by our "run as fast as you can" safety briefing.

This trip for us covered everywhere from Winnipeg to Churchill and back to Winnipeg with a couple of spots in between. The undisputed highlight of the trip was Churchill and the undisputed highlight of our time in Churchill was our time in the the Wildlife Management Area close to but really very far away from a number of large white bears. 

My favorite picture of the day is the one at the end of this post. It's the little head touch from the mom with the closed eyes on the back of her fast growing offspring. These two will stick with me.

The cover picture of this post is a soapstone sculpture called Circumpolar Mother and Cub by Abraham Anghik Ruben, an Inuvialuk Canadian sculptor. We found this work alongside a number of other similar sculptures by the same artist in the Winnipeg Art Gallery in downtown Winnipeg on the first full day of our trip. Maybe this was really the first polar bear we saw on this trip. Or maybe it was just a good luck omen. Anyway, it seemed appropriate to add to this post.

Pigs On The Wing

In late 1979 at the age of 11, I bought my first Pink Floyd record. It was the 7" single "Another Brick In The Wall, Part 2". The record was a huge hit in the United States, reaching number one on Billboard's Hot 100. It was all over the radio and I had to buy a copy to play at home. The song was pulled from the band's album released that same year called The Wall, band leader Roger Waters' semi-autobiographical tale of his journey from fatherless child (his father was killed in World War II) to international rock star and what the journey had done to him.

I had no idea who Pink Floyd was. No clue. I didn't know about their place in rock history or any of their songs or albums. I couldn't have told you if it was one person (which one's Pink?) or a band. I didn't even know they were British until kids asked me (as a recent immigrant to the United States from England) to say or sing "we don't need no education" while I was at school. Completely oblivious. 

I would eventually figure it out. When I was a freshman in college, I watched director Alan Parker's 1982 film adaptation of The Wall album and I was hooked. I'd never seen anything like that movie and I'd never heard anything like the music that was in the film. I got the album on CD for Christmas in 1986, put it on cassette tape and listened to it over and over and over again. And I do mean that. I was relentless. I drove my freshman year roommate crazy with that album. 

That last part was OK. He drove me crazy with other things.

Eventually and quickly, I'd become pretty well obsessed with Pink Floyd. I bought other albums and listened to them with the same fervor and dedication that I applied to The Wall. Dark Side of the Moon. Wish You Were Here. The Final Cut. Meddle. Atom Heart Mother.

One of my favorite Floyd albums was Animals, a five song concept album with a 17-minute long song called "Dogs" on side one. "Sheep" and "Pigs (Three Different Ones)" graced side two to extend the mammalian theme of the album title. The cover art of Animals featured a giant inflatable pig floating above a large brick building with four tall white chimneys. 

That pig was a source of fascination, and the stories about it intrigued me. Apparently, the band brought the pig on tour with them and had it floating around the arenas they played. In the late 1980s, all we could do was read second-hand accounts in books or magazines. There was no internet or treasure trove of pics or videos at fingertip access. The accounts of that pig amounted to something akin to myths or legends. It all added to the mystery about the band. Eventually, I'd see a facsimile of that pig at Roger Waters concerts. I loved it all. All of it. I still love Pink Floyd to this day.

An updated version of the inflatable pig (top left) from Roger Waters' 2022 concert in Washington, DC.

That large brick building with the four tall white chimneys? It's real. It sits on the south bank of the Thames River in London. And since we were in London to see a Tottenham Hotspur match and launch our week plus trip through Wales...time to visit a Pink Floyd album cover.

Considering all the times I've been to London in my life, I'm a little surprised that I have never visited the building that graced the cover of Animals before. I've spent time (and nights) in London in 2014, 2016, 2018, 2024 and way back in the 1990s. And the building was there each time I was there in those years. So sure, it wasn't always open and available to visit like inside the building. But the album cover isn't shot inside. 

So what is this magnificent structure? It's the old Battersea Power Station. It was designed in the art deco style during the 1920s by celebrated British architect Sir Giles Gilbert Scott and was built in two phases (it's actually a double power station) in the 1930s and 1950s. At its peak, it provided twenty percent of the city of London with power. But in 1983, Battersea was closed, no longer needed as an essential cog of London's electric grid. It would sit vacant for decades.

Then it got bought. Then it got re-opened four years ago as a mixed use development featuring a retail, office and residential program and which included brand new structures around the Power Station as the development's centerpiece.

I don't necessarily expect you to know who Sir Gilbert Giles Scott was but if some context is necessary, he designed both the red telephone booths that used to be all over England and he designed the former power station which is now the Tate Modern Museum in the center of London. He has some legacy.

What that re-development means for the actual Power Station today is that it's a giant shopping mall. I'm serious. But it's a pretty darned handsome shopping mall. 

I'm serious. The exterior shell is intact. The interior art deco detailing that graced the interior spaces in the building are still there in all their glory. And those four tall white chimneys are standing magnificently against the skyline of London. They were actually torn down and re-built starting in 2014, so it's probably a good thing I didn't try to visit Battersea that year.

The program of the mall is centered around the two old turbine halls in the building, multi-story spaces with glass skylights running down the entire length of the halls. They even left the old trussed bridge cranes in place as a tribute to the former function of the building. Those spaces, but particularly the west hall, are spectacular. 

We did not shop. Although we did go to Starbucks.

When they reprogrammed, repurposed, rebuilt and everything else "re" about the building that they did to it over the last 15 years or so, they added something called The Chimney Lift to the building. They took the northwest chimney and made it into a giant elevator (lift in England) that you can ride to the top of in a custom-built mostly glass enclosure. 

THAT is why we had to get inside of the Battersea Power Station on this visit. So sure, the Floyd thing was super important (and we WILL come back to that) and yes, the architecture of the Power Station is just amazing from a number of perspectives but mostly that they would spend this much making a power plant look this good, but it was the Chimney Lift that drew us in. 

And truth be told, we had to go twice. It was our first and last destination of our trip. Our very first stop on this trip after we checked in to our hotel was the Battersea Power Station. The Chimney Lift was broken. And facing a situation with no reliable un-broken time or date, we left. After our time in Wales, we flew back home out of Heathrow Airport so our very last stop on this trip right before we ate our final dinner in London was also the Battersea Power Station. And this time the lift was fixed.

A ride on the Chimney Lift costs about £20. It appears based on a look this week that it's dynamically priced, although honestly, I remember it being a flat rate but maybe that's because we bought in person as walk-ups. Not sure about that.

The experience before the ride takes you through some exhibits and facts about the building and if you are so inclined you can stop and take one or two touch screen quizzes. Then there's some waiting in a waiting area and some more waiting in another spot before you get to climb some steps to the lowest level of the lift. Along the way there are facts and video animations related to the Power Station...the Chimney Lift goes up 109 meters...the building used to burn 10,000 tonnes of coal a week to generate electricity...other stuff.

Yikes on that last one by the way. And a tonne is 2,200 pounds, if you were wondering. A staggering amount of coal.

The time on the Lift itself is about 15 minutes. The view is tremendous and that includes the aerial view of Battersea itself and the other three chimneys. But you have to hustle to take it all in because before very long, you are going to be descending so they can get the next lot of Chimney Lift-ers up to the top of the northwest chimney. I'd never been in that part of London really and certainly not really up in the air (so to speak) so the view was appreciated.

Was it worth it? I'll put it this way...I wanted to go on this ride to feel a deeper connection to a band that I love and I can afford it. Sometimes, things aren't what you expect and that's OK. I think it was worth it for me. But I wouldn't necessarily want to take a family up here, especially if I had no connection (via Pink Floyd or anything else) to the building. Again, the view was awesome; it was just too short. There have been bigger disappointments on vacation before. I'm fine with the Chimney Lift.

Beyond the Chimney Lift, we got a great Pink Floyd story out of our visit. And this counts for a lot.

Maybe I knew this story and I forgot it from some Pink Floyd book I read a long, long time ago, but I swear this is a new story for me. 

As much as the cover of Animals looks like a painting or drawing, it's not. It's a photograph (OK...so actually two photographs combined). That meant the Battersea Power Station actually had a giant inflatable pig floating over it while it was photographed on behalf of Roger Waters and Co. 

The shoot was scheduled for three days in December of 1976 and in case the pig somehow got free (meaning broke loose from its moorings) the band or record label or whoever was coordinating the photography hired a marksman as security for the event. And by that, I mean he was supposed to shoot the pig in case it got loose. 

How anyone thought this was a good idea is beyond me. I mean, bullets that go up have to come down, right? And shooting a rifle at an airborne balloon over the city of London doesn't strike me as a particularly bright thought to me. 

So anyway, on day one of the shoot, the marksman shows up on a perfectly dark and gloomy day but it's too windy to feasibly take a picture of the pig so they just photograph the building. Day two comes around the marksman isn't there. They only hired him for a single day. And sure enough, it's still windy that day and the pig broke loose. Nobody to shoot it down (thank God) so it drifted, cancelling flights at Heathrow Airport to the west of the city and landing in a cow field in Kent.

They did actually manage a picture of the pig on day three, but the sky was apparently a gorgeous blue. So they took the pig from day three and stuck in on the background from day one.

That's what we got out of our trip to the Battersea Power Station. And yes, the pig was named. Algie, if you must know.

Battersea Power Station is really all about the chimneys. That's not really true. But it sort of is.

This is not the first place we've traveled where we visited the site of a Pink Floyd album cover. Although it was the only place we've traveled where we intentionally visited the site of a Pink Floyd album cover.

In 2022, we were in Los Angeles (or more accurately probably greater Los Angeles) on a studio tour of the Warner Brothers property in Burbank when the driver of our tour bus / enhanced golf cart / whatever it was we were riding around in casually mentioned that the view to our right was where the cover of Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here album was shot. And sure enough after I got home and compared my hastily shot iPhone picture to the cover of Floyd's 1975 album (and precursor to Animals), he was correct. Not that I really suspected he was not.

Now we've been to two of them. And honestly and completely understanding Pink Floyd's album cover collection, I can't realistically see myself ever getting to the location of a third. And if we somehow found the house where the cover of Ummagumma was shot (if it even still exists) or the field where the cover of Atom Heart Mother was created, I mean why would we even want to? I think two is good enough here. 

That wraps up England and Wales for 2026. Canada up next! Again!

And this is the second post from this trip which takes its title from Pink Floyd's Animals. Enough Floyd. For now.