On the ice, in the willows, and along the shoreline, these two bears were constantly play fighting as they passed the time waiting for the bay to freeze. They may not have eaten anything substantial in months, and once frozen, the bears can finally move out onto the ice to hunt for their favorite food source, ringed seals.

The one disappointment of my recent trip was that I didn’t see many other species other than polar bears. I did, however, see this guy — a short-tailed weasel. And I guess you can count this as two species because of the lemming in its mouth. I was fortunate to get the shot, as it was only there for a second before scampering off. I’ll be flying to Colorado tonight for Thanksgiving and hopefully some bighorn rams. Have a good holiday and see you all on Monday with some more polar bears.

This guy was either licking his paw or trying to catch some of those snowflakes. As you can see, the tongue is dark in color. Most polar bears have an even darker, almost black tongue — the same color as the skin under all that white fur.

I stayed at Seal River Lodge in northern Manitoba, Canada for four nights last week in the hopes of bringing back some nice photographs of polar bears.  The lodge sits in the middle of the sub-Arctic tundra, miles from any other habitation and is prime polar bear territory from mid October to mid November — just before the Hudson Bay freezes and the bears move out onto the ice to hunt for seals. The only access to the lodge is via an eight passenger plane from the small town of Churchill, a half an hour south. It was the final morning of my trip and I had already gotten plenty of photos of the bears in all sorts of settings and in all sorts of lighting conditions. Satisfied with the four days of shooting, the group I was with wasn’t even certain if we would venture out on the final morning because we were due to catch the flight back to Churchill shortly after breakfast — and also because the temperature had dipped to minus – 27º Fahrenheit with the wind chill factor. But then everything came together perfectly and we all forgot about the wind and the cold and the fact that we had to catch a flight. First thing was the mist that was rising off the water of the bay for the first time all week. Then there was the low tide, exposing giant boulders of ice scattered across the shoreline. The sky was looking good with nice low clouds and a rising sun. Everything was perfect, except there were no bears. And then, on cue, three showed up and cooperatively walked right out into the middle of it all. The first photo was taken vertically because my lens was too long and I couldn’t get the sun in otherwise. The second was a few minutes later after I changed to a shorter lens.

Those are giant green sea anemones mixed in among all the barnacles, mussels and other tidepool life. This was taken one cloudy morning along the Washington coast in Olympic National Park.

Here’s another look at the sun rising behind Monument Valley in Utah.