Unfortunately we woke to rain bucketing down.
After breakfast we boarded the bus for the drive to a
covered hide where, although visibility wasn't as good, we could at least sit in the dry to watch any action.
Red-breasted mergansers f. - awful but the only one I've got.
A mother with
two yearling cubs was already on the island in front of the hide when we arrived, and
they remained in view for around ninety minutes. They spent over half an hour digging up salmon eggs before moving to the river, where they ate dead salmon, taking the easy way to feed rather than trying to catch live fish.
This might have made quite a nice photo if I hadn't been photo bombed by a gull!
Eventually they walked up river and out of view.
We sat around for what seemed like an eternity waiting for more bears to turn up (they didn't) and I tried to keep myself amused by photographing anything in sight.
After lunch some of the group went for a walk up the track to learn
about some of the plants and ecology of the rainforest. Ian and I decided to stay in the warm, dry lodge and have a little snooze which was probably a good move as one of our party was unable to complete the short 3k walk and so they all had to hang around whilst the bus was despatched to collect them. They couldn't split up as there weren't enough rangers to protect separate groups from any bear attack.
When we arrived at the hide for the evening session, unsurprisingly the island was almost completely covered. The river was
significantly deeper than the previous evening and so I messed around with long exposures and after ninety minutes
without seeing a bear we left and boarded the bus.
"Marmite" images I know.
On the way back to the lodge we were allowed out of the bus to view a "bear bath" where apparently they're known to wallow.
A couple of other stops at places where salmon were moving upstream near the track were also unsuccessful, so we returned to the lodge for dinner, and owner Tom gave a presentation about the history of the Lodge.