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Saturday, September 22, 2018

The Wonder of Watching Bears Swim!

It has been a rough week of four migraines and unwelcome news. So, I was absolutely thrilled to find my favorite kind of wildlife video on my memory cards - bear swimming. Something about a bear swimming makes me grin from ear to ear. They seem so relaxed and happy in the water that all my tension fades away.

This was the first site of a bear swimming. I believe that this is Mohawk, the youngish sow who was a star of the mating season. It's actually quite hard to identify a bear after she's been eating for 20 hours a day for the past couple of months. My ID of "Mohawk" is that she's the right general size, the right color, and she keeps rubbing her left ear. She did that repeatedly during baths back in June.
She swam around, snorting and stopping to groom, for about 2 minutes! It was early evening in a pond on my friends' land. It looks so peaceful and refreshing.

I could not identify the next bear to swim in a different pond that is not far away. I have two cams on that pond, and the first cam captured a photo as the bear entered the water. She looks fat and beautiful. That's how bears should look at this time of year!

She swam straight across the pond, and seemed to be showing off for my other cam. She looked gorgeous as she swam toward that cam for the first time.

Then, she stopped and her head bobbed straight upward in front of my cam. Doesn't she look cute?

And this photo was just before she exited the pond right in front of my cam. One way to know that she's not as big as a full grown male is that her ears look big relative to her head. That's always my first clue about whether a bear is an adult female or male.

Our weather turned much cooler over the past two days so the bears may be wrapping up their swimming season. It was 37°F this morning. Brrrr.

Of course, I want to share the video of these bears' swims. I hope that your stress melts away like mine did when I watched these bears enjoying the water.


13 comments:

  1. Hari Om
    what joy. sending soothing vibes right back to you! YAM xx

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  2. Those are amazingly wonderful and the water fun looks delightful!

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  3. the second bear looks fat and healthy and I love the grunting joyful noises she makes. they are so very beautiful and they do make me feel happy. our stress levels are crazy to the max, as we wait on what is coming for Jake. the good news is he had a really good 24 hours yesterday, almost his normal self and slept like he used to, no pacing/panting, but this am he fell when he got up and we had to pick him up, he walked ok but really slow and seems lost more than he was.

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  4. Sorry to hear about your migraines and bad news. I can relate to the difficulty of physical reactions to stress. Thanks for continuing to share your wonderful trail cam captures.

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  5. Migraines I hear are horrid and stress with worry can surely aggravate it. I hope it is better.
    Ms. Bear showed up just when you needed her.
    Hugs Cecilia

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  6. I wonder if their feet can feel the bottom below.The last few seconds, with water droplets spraying in front of the trail cam lens, what a part to capture. Guess soon they will look for their dens. Hope those migraines go, nothing worse than a whole lot in a row. XXX

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    1. I think that their paws can reach the bottom of the pond close to edges. And there may be spots near the middle where they also can reach the bottom. I've never swum in those ponds. They don't appear to have the clearest and cleanest water.

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  7. Today was not a good day, this made it a little better! Thanks for sharing!

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  8. They look so happy and peaceful enjoying their swim.

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  9. Sometimes it is the little things that make us smile. Sometime it's the great big forces of nature that do it.

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  10. the bears always make us smile too. We hope the migraines have gone away. Take care.

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  11. Talk about a romping and rolling bath. Love it!

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  12. These videos are so beautiful!
    love
    tweedles

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