Last month, we went to Churchill, Manitoba to find polar bears. We succeeded, seeing six in our four days in town. And it was really finding five in our last day in the Churchill Wildlife Management Area, which was exactly the place we were supposed to find white bears.
Our trip to Churchill was a group tour. We've taken these from time to time over the last 13 or so years when it really seems there are advantages to have someone else take care of the logistics of getting from Point A to Point B. This tour was a nine day tour, with the Churchill part of the tour occupying all or parts of days five through eight. Before we went to Churchill, we met our group in Winnipeg. After that, we spent two nights in a place called Riding Mountain National Park, a Parks Canada property about two or so hours north of Winnipeg by bus.
The theme of the tour that we took was Canada's Big Five, a play on Africa's Big Five wildlife designation, which we've searched for a number of times since we started traveling to sub-Saharan Africa in 2015. There of course is no universally acknowledged Canadian Big Five; it's something our tour operator made up and assigned as the polar bear, the beluga whale, the moose, the black bear and the bison. Churchill was supposed to cover the first two of those animals. Riding Mountain was supposed to cover the last three. Although in reverse, so to speak.
Time to report on our time in Riding Mountain.
How gorgeous is the picture above, by the way? There was lots of this in Riding Mountain. Early morning with mist coming off the water. It's absolutely spectacular. If you've ever seen a moose in the wild, it looks like a perfect place to find moose, right?
We'll come back to that.
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| Welcome to Riding Mountain National Park. |
Our two nights in Riding Mountain were completely immersive. And by that, I mean that once we got into the Park, we remained in the Park. Our hotel (in the town of Wasagaming) was in the Park. We ate in the Park. And we did everything else for about 36 hours that we could have done in the Park. We entered and we didn't leave. We even had lunch served to us in the bandstand in the main park by the lake in Wasagaming and we ate a catered, three-course meal by the side of a (different) lake in the Park proper.
So about that wildlife...
Our wildlife watching in the Park began with our initial drive from the East Gate to the town of Wasagaming (pronouced WA-sa-GA-ming in Hopwood phonetics) followed by four hours-long evening and morning drives (that's two evening drive and two morning drives) to specific locations within the Park. The sun comes up early in central Manitoba in early August and it goes down late, so drives starting at 6 a.m. and ending at 9 p.m. are still daylight drives.
Our safari vehicle for our two days is shown in the picture above. Small and nimble I guess but photographing wildlife from the vehicle is done by opening the tiny windows at the top of the glazing on each side. Inconvenient? Sure! Until I figured out how to position my body, I got a bunch of shaky photographs. But small windows admit fewer mosquitoes. And I don't think I have seen as many mosquitoes in any one spot in recent memory as I saw in Riding Mountain. Thank God we didn't encounter blackflies, which our guides swore were around in profusion as recently as the prior week (deet repels mosquitos but not blackflies). Suffice it to say there was much mosquito swatting going on in that van or bus or whatever it is really classified as.
So we are about 20 minutes in to our first wildlife drive on the first evening we are in the Park and lo and behold by the side of the road is a black bear eating some berries. Like right by the side of the road and 20 minutes might be actually further into our actual drive than when we found this bear. It might have been 10 minutes. How great is this? And legitmately, like our entire busful of tourists is making a ton of excited noises when we pull over for a better look.
Bus stops, everyone stands up, tiny windows get opened and some shaky picture taking ensues. And it's not just one black bear. It's a mother and cub. How amazing is this? We are on a Canada's Big Five (made up, I realize still) tour and like 10 minutes (yes, I'm officially revising the number...) into our first search for the black bear / moose / bison portion of the Big Five and we see two black bears. Damn! How great is this?
And yes, I realize the pictures above just show one bear. Blame it on the rushed, shaky picture taking.
Of course...they took off. I'm not saying it was all the noise coming from the bus loaded with 18-20 or so wildlife tourists, but it might have been. I mean, it's difficult to really assess how loud you are being outside of the bus when you are inside of the bus, especially when you are super excited and actually one of the sources of the noise. But it might have been the noise coming from the bus.
Still, we are between 10 and 15 minutes into the first of four wildlife drives and we spot two bears. Go us!!!
We didn't see another black bear the entire tour.
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| One of our guides demonstrating how a bear might have made the claw marks on the Stop sign pole; this does not count as a bear sighting. |
Before we get to some things that we DID see in Riding Mountain, what is the deal with Canada and black bears and our vacations? This is the second summer in a row that we've explored some Parks Canada National Parks where bears allegedly live in at least reasonable numbers and we have seen fewer bears combined than we can count on one hand. Last summer...one black bear. This summer...two. And it's not like we spent an hour or two total or something roaming around looking for wildlife. We spent at least (and I'm guessing here) 25 hours each summer looking for bears. At least.
Admittedly, the one look we got last summer was spectacular.
So yes, we saw bison. And yes, that's exciting. It's not every day that we get to see bison. By the same token, we've seen bison in a number of places over the last decade or so, including Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, South Dakota and North Dakota. We've seen way more bison in most of each of our days bison-watching than we've seen black bears in our lives.
Is it difficult to find bison in Riding Mountain National Park? The answer to that is yes and no. We went looking for bison twice on this trip. We found one and only one on our first drive and way too many to reflect any sort of accurate count the second time. I'd love to report that we got lucky the first time and super lucky the second time but the bison in RMNP are in an enclosure that's fenced and cattle-guarded to prevent the bison from leaving the enclosure.
Granted, it's a big enclosure but these are some large mammals. I'd say we got lucky on the second drive and somewhat unlucky on the first.
But these were also some particularly good looks. Rare are the times I've been super close to a bison. On this trip, there were a number of these animals right alongside the road next to our van. Like less than three feet away. We also saw some nursing going on and let me say that the force with which a baby bison slams his or head into their mother's udder is concerning in its viciousness. These are some powerful strikes to coax a little milk out of mom. I can't imagine that it's comfortable in any way for the mother. Still...when you have kids, sometimes it's not easy, I guess.
The calving was cool. I still feel bad for the moms, though.
We also managed to find a good number of active or abandoned beaver lodges in our time driving around the Park and we actually managed a look at an actual live beaver. My best picture is immediately above. The beaver is the small thing (it's just its head) in the water right above the grass at the bottom of the picture. The shiny ripple on the right side of the photograph is the beaver's wake as it's moving across the pond.
And yes, we also found birds. I mean why wouldn't we find birds? My best five bird pictures from the Park are below and feature the best photographs I've ever taken of a yellow-bellied sapsucker (first pic); some barn swallows (second pic); and a black and white warbler (third pic). The other two (spotted sandpiper and merlin) are new species for me. Cool stuff. But we did go out on drives four times for multiple hours.
I'm not complaining exactly about the birdlife and to be fair, we weren't just birdwatching, but I can find more birds up close in a park near our home in Northern Virginia in a couple of hours than we found in four multiple hours-long wildlife drives in Riding Mountain. Maybe it sounds like that's an actual complaint and maybe it is. I need to hold on to the "best picture ever" of three individual bird species. That admittedly, I didn't need to go all the way to Canada to see.
So lots of bison, two black bears, a beaver and a few (admittedly excellent) looks at birds. What about the moose?
No moose. We got nothing. Zero. Nada. The squadoosh. Not a one. Unless you count the two at the bottom of this post.
Ultimately and because of the moose and two black bears, Riding Mountain will go down as a bit of a disappointment for me. Do I sound spoiled? I think I do. There are only so many people on this planet that get to go explore other countries (like EVERY year) looking for all sorts of amazing wildlife and I am for sure one of them. And I'm complaining because I only saw two bears and didn't find a moose in a couple of days in a Park? Yeah, I am. Just a bit.
We understand what the expectation is for wildlife sightings on a wildlife tour and that number starts and ends with none. Seeing animals in the wild is at their pleasure, not ours. But in so many ways, this side trip was supposed to be a warm up for the main event in Churchill where we (hopefully, please hopefully) would find polar bears in the wild. But it didn't really warm us up. If anything, it made us more nervous about seeing nothing in and around Churchill.
Overall, this trip was a success for us. We wanted to see polar bears and we saw them. We also got some other unique experiences out of this trip that were supremely valuable and special that will be extolled in blog posts not yet written. Sometimes, emotions get in the way. They did here because Riding Mountain I think was advertised to us as a wildlife experience and I forgot about the wildlife guarantee discussed in the prior paragraph in this post. I need to hold on to the bison calving, the amazing bird pictures and the beaver.
The two almost moose we saw in Riding Mountain are below. So I guess we saw three black bears after all.
