A long way back

The remaining couple of days in Churchill were very uninspiring, we couldn't get back to the highs of the Polar Bear tundra buggy experience. We had a possible exciting moment, when one evening as we drove down the long track to the Marina to look for Belugas while the wind had subsided, we were parked up and saw a brief white tail disappear behind a rock a few feet from the car. A few seconds later, what looked like a Wolf appeared from behind the rock and casually walked around the car park before moving back up to the road. I say "what looked like" since there are a lot of sled dogs in Churchill that bear more than a passing resemblance to a true wolf, and although we were 15km out of town, the possibility this was just one of them can't be ruled out, I'm not sure we'll ever know.

Driving the same few roads as the previous didn't produce much other than much closer views of an Arctic Hare, again sitting on the lee side of rocks by the road, and unconcerned at us approaching them on foot.

The next couple of days have been far from relaxing and the camera has hardly been used, and have just been spent travelling, firstly the gruelling 14 hour train ride back to Thompson with a 3 hour drive to a town called The Pas straight after. Having had mostly cloudy nights while in Churchill, the night on the train was clear, and we got our best views of the Northern Lights.

On arriving in The Pas, the only accommodation we could find online ahead of arriving in the town was an inn, and even before we set foot in the place we had an uneasy feeling about it. This was made worse by driving round the back of the building to our room, past a group of people that looked like they were doing a drug deal. On top of this, while we were settling into our room, there was a discussion in the hallway outside where someone had called social services on one of the residents, not the most restful of places, especially with a long drive ahead next day. Despite the now late hour, we decided to get the hell out of there and thankfully found a much nicer hotel nearby, though why they aren't on hotel booking sites I'll never know, and we could have saved a lot of stress!!

The next day we drove 1,100km back to Alberta, which took just over 12 hours in total. We took a different route back, but as with the drive eastwards, we still faced mile after mile of incredibly straight road, we measured one at 55km from one bend in the road until the next! 

Arriving back around Calgary, we were met by a scene similar to something out of an apocalypse movie, lightning, very strong wind, rain and hail, we honestly thought a tornado was going to develop any second, but we made it to our accommodation near Sundre unscathed.

Next morning, we awoke to a glorious sunny and frosty morning, and the ranch we were staying on was perfect for a short morning walk. The hoped for Great Grey Owls that they have breeding on site sadly didn't appear, but a close encounter with a Moose, plus many American Tree Sparrows, Dark-eyed Juncos, Red-breasted Nuthatches, a Sharp-shinned Hawk and another Harris's Sparrow were seen.

Our final destination for a few days before we head back to the UK is just outside Bragg Creek. When we visited Canada in 2016, Toni found some Wild Horses to photograph near here and so we came in via the Ghost River Valley, but the horses were mostly hiding in the trees and a Golden Eagle was about the only bird of interest to be had, some Bighorn Sheep by the road were much more photogenic though. 

Being just outside Banff National Park, we will at least get a day there to look for Elk, wolves and other more exciting wildlife in the next day or two, and hopefully get the chance to reacquaint ourselves with he camera once more.

Big White Tour

Having spent the last couple of days fruitlessly driving the few roads around Churchill trying to find some Polar Bears, we joined a Frontiers North Tundra Buggy tour. After a short bus ride from the town, we boarded the tundra buggy near the Northern Studies Research Centre and set off along the bumpy "tracks" in search of bears.

We hadn't been travelling much more than 15 minutes when one of the passengers at the front of the buggy spotted a Polar Bear asleep in the shelter of some rocks ahead. As we trundled our way closer, another passenger saw an Arctic Fox sitting a short way off to the side, and thankfully it stayed put as we scrambled outside the buggy onto the back viewing platform. Unfortunately, my binocular strap chose that particular moment to come undone and so I only managed to quickly grabbed a couple of photos before trying to fix the strap to stop them falling on the floor. By the time I'd fixed the strap, the fox had ambled into some willows and out of sight.

Going back to the bear, the driver was excellent, and slowly crept us along the ridge above where the bear was resting. On hearing the buggy above her, the bear appeared looking over a rock at us, and then decided to come and check us out properly and walked to within a few feet of the buggy, often sniffing the air to try to work out what all these thing were making clicking noises.

After a few moments, she walked away and then turned around, and came back for another look, before deciding we weren't really that interesting and set off toward another group of rocks. The driver, left her be for 10 minutes, which having seen the behaviour of some tour guides in Africa particular was incredibly responsible, as the inhabitants of the buggy all regaled how incredible a view we had just had. As we set off again and had to go past her, she had settled again in the lee of some rocks, and hardly batted an eyelid and she slept on some rocks and we left her to resume her sleep.

We trundled on across the tundra, seeing occasional groups of Snow Bunting and Shore Larks and then some Willow Ptarmigan (sorry, Willow Grouse, they call them Ptarmigan over here to confuse things even though they are the same Red Grouse we get in Britain, though these guys turn white which ours don't!) which kept in among the willow scrub.

After a stop for lunch, we began to head back, and came across another bear, though it was much further away, walking along a spit, but after the earlier views of the young female, this bear was nowhere near as exciting.

As we retraced our steps and headed back to shore, we passed the original bear, who by this time was out walking around along a spit looking for a snack. It was nice to watch her in her environment as the tour guide told us tales of how he once saw 27 bears from one spot but nowadays, in a good day you may see 10 in a day. The population in Hudson Bay has nearly halved in his 20 years doing tours here, and who knows what the future holds for these magnificent animals?

Planes, trains and automobiles

Having flown across the Atlantic, driven 1,500km from Calgary to Thompson, we caught the overnight train to Churchill. The train is quite a slow moving and very rocky and clattery one, trying to get a decent night's sleep on the reclining chairs is not easy and we arrived in Churchill feeling more jetlagged than we did after the flight to Canada. As we approached Churchill, we did see a few birds, mostly Willow Grouse, which had mostly moulted and so had a lot of white on them, and also a couple of Rough-legged Buzzards.

The rental car company met us off the train with the truck we were hiring, took payment for the car and handed us a map of the area, with roads and track we were allowed to drive on marked and then a series of Xs for those we weren't. However, given the scale of the map, it's not that easy to work out which is which in real life, but annoyingly, the track known locally as "Polar Bear Alley" was one of the off limits ones!

A couple of people we had met en route to Churchill were adamant we would see bears and we rather innocently thought there would be quite a few around along the shore and easy to see, if not get close to. However, it is early in the season and the biting northerly wind may be making them keep their heads down, and after 2 days of driving various road and tracks and scanning shorelines, we still haven't seen a Polar Bear, or much else come to that.

The excitement, for me anyway, reached its peak as we drove along a track by the river. Suddenly I braked and swerved so that I could get my lens lined up on something ahead. Toni said, "Is there something exciting?" to which I replied, "Yes, Sparrows!". Possibly not what she was expecting, but on the track were 4 sparrows - 3 American Tree Sparrow and 1 Harris's Sparrow, both species I've not seen before. The Harris's Sparrow showed quite well by the side of the track and I did at least manage a few respectable photos of it.

To even things out, since Toni much prefers furry animals to feathered ones, this morning while driving down one track, we did find a couple of Arctic Hares, both hunkered down behind rocks sheltering from the blustery wind, and when we returned later in the day, they were still there and clearly not moving far from their sheltered spots.

Hopefully, tomorrow's tundra buggy tour will be more fruitful for seeing and photographing Polar Bears than driving back and forth along the same roads each day has been...

The long, and certainly not winding, road

Canada is big. Very big! Even though we are used to driving large distances on these trips, the last few days has felt like quite a slog. It has taken 3 days of travelling east from Elk Island National Park, about 1,300km, to our destination of Thompson, Manitoba from where we will catch the train to Churchill.

We have done long drives in Canada before, but in British Columbia, where the scenery is spectacular. Travelling east from Alberta, through Saskatchewan it is flat, very flat, that would give Norfolk a run for its money, and other than endless cereal fields and the odd lake, there's not a great deal to see. With no hills to go around, roads through here and neighbouring Manitoba are as straight as a ruler, as far as the eye can see, often 15km between bends in the road, and they have been largely empty of traffic too and cruise control has been a blessing. In Manitoba, the endless cereal fields of Saskatchewan are replaced by forest, which means that even large lakes showing on the sat nav next to the road are invisible behind the thick trees.

Being autumn, there has been some obvious migration of geese, and in Saskatchewan, some of the fields and lakes have attracted large numbers of Snow Geese in particular, with fewer White-fronted and Cackling Geese. Our first night we stopped in Shelbrooke, just west of Prince Albert, and just before we reached the town, a large lake along the roadside hosted several thousand Snow Geese and other wildfowl, that got spooked, presumably by a Northern Harrier that was hunting the shore, providing an amazing spectacle as the geese took to the air.

In the evening, we took a drive up into Prince Albert National Park where we found a Beaver on a small pond and as we returned down the gravel track, a Snowshoe Hare and a comical pair of Raccoons were added to the mammal list.

The drive from Shelbrooke to Creighton, which is on the border with Manitoba, and is a shift in the time zone was even less eventful. A stop at a picnic site by a lake for a snack was a signal for some Canada Jays to descend to see if we had anything to offer them, and pose for some photos, naturally.

The big problem with such long, boring, straight roads is keeping concentration. Back in Norfolk, I'm used to little Muntjac Deer feeding by the roadside and walking out, but here in Canada there's bigger deer, namely Moose, that have a habit of doing the same, with potentially serious implications if you don't watch out. As we drove a particularly long straight stretch, we noticed a large bull Moose standing on the edge of the trees on the verge by the road, and so started slowing down, just as we were overtaken by someone who hadn't noticed the Moose, until he got much nearer to it! Thankfully the Moose turned round and ran back into the trees, and so an accident was avoided.

Having checked in to our accommodation in Creighton, and found a flock of Ross's Geese on a playing field next to the hotel, we looked on a map and found a nice quiet-looking spot by a lake, from where we hoped the forecast Northern Lights would be visible. As we arrived, we saw 2 Mink bounding around a picnic site, a species that in the UK is an unwelcome non-native species, but here we enjoyed watching them without feeling any guilt!

Unfortunately, when picking our nice quiet spot on a map, we hadn't accounted for a camp nearby having a very loud wedding bash, and despite staying until after dark, the forecast Northern Lights didn't materialise. Oh well, hopefully we will have better luck another night, but apart from the noise, it was a lovely spot.

Today we have driven the final leg, and have now arrived in Thompson, and are quite looking forward to a few days of no long drives!! Tomorrow afternoon, we catch the slow-moving, overnight train north to Churchill where we hope to photograph Polar Bears, though the temperature here in Thompson is 17 degrees, and doesn't feel very wintry to be photographing such animals!