Marmots and Eagles and Bears, oh my!

Adventures with Wildlife in the Canadian Rockies

Greetings from Cork, Ireland.  We’re in the process of getting adjusted back to European time after our North American sojourn (with the help of locally-brewed Murphy’s Irish Stout).  In the meantime, here’s one last post from our time in Canada – this one focused on the mountainous fauna.

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In addition to the hiking and the beautiful vistas, the Canadian Rockies offer another remarkable feature, which is the accessibility of wildlife.  Over our time in the parks (and here, our time in Jasper accounted for probably 90% of this), we had many encounters with different kinds of wildlife, from the cute (different species of squirrel) to the absolutely terrifying (enormous black crows).  This post will detail (often with pictures) a few of our more exciting wildlife spottings.

Black Bears

Not wanting to bury the lead, I’m starting with the most exciting, and, to us, the most remarkable of the animal sightings.  In four days in Jasper, we saw 7 black bears!  I recall seeing a black bear on my last trip… just barely, as it scampered into the trees or something.  That would be have been exciting.  But many of these were what I would call “very good sightings.”  That is to say, we were able to appreciate the bear in all its glory for at least a small amount of time. 

The first two such sightings were on our drive up along Icefields Parkway and then east to our accommodations on the first day.  In both instances, cars were already stopped by the side of the road because there was a bear, just, right there.  In the first case, the bear was actually walking in the road.  In the second, the bear was munching on some grass and flowers at the side of the road.  In neither instance were there more than 2-3 cars of other human observers, which gave it a sort of intimate feel. 

The first bear we saw - right there! Gelsey didn’t want to roll down her window.

The location of the second bear sighting offered some particularly nice opportunities for photographs with the mountains rising up and sunlit in the background.

Can you imagine a better habitat for a bear?!

Our next bear encounter was enough to get the adrenaline pumping because we were not in the car at the time of the encounter.  We had stopped at a scenic overlook at the north end of Medicine Lake.  From the area where we parked, it’s a short walk down to the lakeshore.  We took a small snack, which we ate, and had just turned around to walk back to the car when we encountered a bear blocking our path.

At this moment, I longed for the safety of the closed-windowed car

The bear seemed… big.  Maybe it was that the bear was above us (we parked above the lake and walked down to it).  Maybe it was that neither of us wanted to get eaten by a bear.  Maybe it was just that bears are big animals.  Whatever the cause, it was big, and blocking our path to the car, and actually walking our direction.  We began to walk quickly (not run!) in the other direction where we warned some other lake-goers about the impending arrival of a large ursine companion. 

After a couple of minutes of retreat, it became clear that the bear couldn’t be less bothered by or interested in our presence.  It was just munching on the grass it was finding amongst the lakeshore boulders.  We made our way to the next scenic overlook parking lot (now with a small cluster of eager observers who had not yet seen the bear), and eventually the bear made its way past by the lakeshore, still totally unbothered by its several human observers.  This did afford the opportunity to snap a couple great photos of the bear at the absolute tip of the lake. 

But the bear didn’t pay us any attention, and eventually walked through this shot! Pretty cool, eh?

On our day hiking up to Sulfur Skyline, we encountered 3 bears on the drive.  The first, on the drive up to the trailhead was our most fleeting glimpse (given other sightings, I won’t bore with you a not-that-great photo here).  And on our way down we encountered two more bears, this sighting notable for the fact that the second was only a small cub, probably 3-4 months old.  Sadly, the bears were in the shadow of the woods, clearly visible with the naked eye, but unable to be well-captured with a camera. 

Our last bear sighting was probably our best automotive sighting.  As we were exiting Jasper along Icefields Parkway, we encountered a bear on the opposite side of the road walking the same direction we were.  By now, I’d become a bit better driver in “animal traffic” so I figured I would pull up a bit ahead of where the bear was and hope the bear walked towards us.  Good call, Alex.

Look at that!

This gives you a sense of how close he was. Sorry about the windshield glare.

But this was only the beginning of the bear sighting.  For the next five minutes or so, the bear walked along the top of the ridge next to the road, and we just cruised along at 3 mph or something next to it, enjoying watching it munch on flowers and roots and berries and whatever else was in its path.  Gelsey even got a video.

Elk

My recollection from my past trip to the Canadian Rockies was that elk were ubiquitous, so ubiquitous they almost became boring.  But after a few days, we hadn’t seen any.  Well, it turns out we had, but we got confused and thought a small solo female elk was a deer.  Oops.  Wildlifing rookie mistake.  But we hadn’t seen many elk. 

Well, that was soon rectified.  On several occasions we saw mini herds of elk (often around 5 at a time).  We also managed to find some bucks, including, at one point, two bucks hanging out together in the same field with no females nearby.

Nice golden hour light on this elk, which really make the antlers seem like they’re practically glowing.

We probably saw the most elk near Lake Minnewanka in Banff, but there were plenty in and around Jasper as well. 

Yum, grass

Deer

To this Pittsburgh native, deer aren’t really the most interesting animal to find in the wild, but we did see a faun, which was quite cute.

Look at those little stubs of antlers!

Moose

Sadly, our moose sighting wasn’t very good.  A female moose bolted up on the other side of the highway about even with us.  As I slammed the brakes, it bolted behind the car and down into the woods on the other side.  I got an okay glimpse through the rearview mirror (enough to tell it was a moose!) but Gelsey barely saw it. 

Mountain Goats

The mountain goats in the Rockies aren’t like the goats you see at a local petting zoo or farm.  They seem a bit more regal, a bit more old-man-like, and their distinctive white coats make them stand out even from far away.  We only saw a pair of mountain of goats high up on a rocky cliff-side once, but they were still nicely posed for a photo.

These goats look as curmudgeonly as I feel most of the time!

Bighorn Sheep

These guys, which look more like the standard goats you might see, were absolutely everywhere.  We saw two large groups on our drive the first day, both of which contained several males with the fully curved around horns.  In subsequent days we saw similarly-sized groups, but usually with mostly females and juveniles.  The babies were quite cute!

Those are some horns!

This was a nice moment as a mama and lamb climbed up the rocks!

Hoary Marmot

We had a furry friend at our Airbnb outside Jasper.  He seemed to live under the deck.  Unfortunately this meant I suspect we startled him every time we came and went.  I imagine they might be something of a nuisance critter to locals, but as people not responsible for this property, we enjoyed the company!

Peekaboo!

Ground Squirrels

The most common species of ground squirrel in this region of Canada looks more like a large chipmunk than anything else.  They seemed to inhabit areas with high numbers of tourists (think scenic overlooks) and guidebooks warned there are some particularly cunning lunch thieves among them.  We didn’t encounter this problem personally, but it was clear that they are not afraid of humans.

“Do you have any nuts?”

Bald Eagle

On our first excursion to Medicine Lake (see above re pedestrial bear sighting), we also noticed a sign that indicated part of the lake (and shoreline) was closed to all human activity for the protection of a bald eagle nesting site. 

As we drove up the road (and then back) on this first day, we spotted the nest but not eagles.  On the second day, there still weren’t any eagles when we drove up to hike out to Beaver Lake.  But on our return, one was perched in a tree, not too far from the nest, but in a tree slightly closer to the road.  These creatures really are impressive.

Clearly superior to the wild turkey

Here, you can see the nest in a tree on the right-hand side of the photo. The eagle is in the biggest tree on the left.

Other birds

Around Lake Moraine and Lake Louise we encountered a number of Clark’s nutcrackers, which we were familiar with from the board game Wingspan.  There were a number of black-billed magpies (like the squirrels, often hanging out around humans).  We spotted (well, saw at a great distance and identified via their distinctive call) a pair of loons at the Vermillion Lakes.  And of course, we saw many Canada geese, mallards, and a number of goslings/ducklings.  There were also a number of terrifyingly large crows, including one which commandeered a tourist’s car in the parking lot for one of the waterfalls.

Hello there, Mr. Nutcracker