After a long, rough 20 hour ride, I am back in Homer from the Katmai Coast with my mind and hard drive full of images of the world’s most beautiful bears in one of the most scenic wilderness coastlines on earth. It was a great month with lots of intimate moments with gorgeous female bears with cubs. The highlight of the summer for me was hanging out with Parsnip, a beautiful sow who starred in the BBC documentary The Great Bear Stakeout several years ago.
I spent time with lots of bear families this summer, including 3 females with spring cubs (6 months old), which was obviously incredible, but time with this family of second summer cubs provided some of my favorite moments. These little guys would play for hours a day.
This mother is another very familiar face and is the bear called “Parsnip” in the BBC film The Great Bear Stakeout. She has two healthy second summer cubs this year.
Parsnip’s second summer cub.
Watching the two cubs go at it for hours in the late evening.
I saw the family on my first day with the bears in late June.
A large, stiff section of dried kelp makes for a great playtoy for a bear cub.
Lots more bear images to come shortly!
4 Comments
Fabulous Photos !! Was already missing Katmai and my time there, and now this just made it all worse !! Thanks a lot !! Hehehe ! ? JK.
looks like parsnip is still the beautiful bear she was when great bear stakeout was filmed.
and great photos too, brad!
hope to visit katmai soon enough(especially hallo bay). it’s my dream vacation.
how’s van doing? is he still around? how old would he be? it’d be cool to meet him, or pushki, or parsnip, if they’re still close by.
i also love bears, and basically all wildlife and nature. though bears are probably my passion, and i’ve been fascinated for a long time. i keep reading about them and watching docs(great bear stakeout has been my favourite so far) and just trying to stay updated and learning as much as i can about them.
thanks for thé photos!
-christian
the*
What a wonderful experience to see this amazing mom over a 5 month period and all she and her cubs endured to survive — Any more recent sightings of parsnip, and her cubs and her son Pushki?Thanks for bringing these important stories and hope more to come for the future.