• On Thin Ice: Polar Bears in Churchill, Manitoba
• Gentle Giants: Gray Whales in Baja California
• The Eagle has Landed: Bald Eagles in the Klamath Basin

ON THIN ICE

By Chris Woolston

You'd think that starving polar bears would be bundles of bad attitude, nothing but snarls and growls wrapped up in white fur. But the bears that gather by the hundreds each October on the coastline near Churchill, in Manitoba, Canada, maintain a regal, Zen-like serenity that belies the emptiness of their stomachs.

Three months removed from their last decent meal, the bears lumber along rocky beaches and sit on their haunches and yawn, showing three-inch canine teeth going to no good use. They scratch their bellies and roll in beds of orange moss and patches of brown grass on the not yet frozen tundra.

On a recent visit to Churchill—a small port town of about 900 people on the western shore of Hudson Bay that calls itself the Polar Bear Capital of the World—I saw two big males playfully pawing and gnawing at each other before collapsing for a nap on a kelp bed. Sparring males reliably put on the best show on the tundra. Now and then, both will stand on their hind legs and throw seemingly friendly jabs.

More life-list animals Hooked on wildlife spotting? Here are a few more amazing creatures and places where you can, with luck, see them in their natural surroundings. Bighorn sheep BEST PLACE TO VIEW: Whiskey Mountain, Dubois, Wyo. Tours begin at the National Bighorn Sheep Interpretive Center, (307) 455-3429, bighorn.org. BEST TIME: Mid-November through March. Condor BEST PLACE TO VIEW: Pinnacles Visitor Center, Pinnacles National Monument, Paicines, Calif., (831) 389-4485, nps.gov/pinn. BEST TIME: Year-round, midday in fair weather. Elephant seal BEST PLACE TO VIEW: Ano Nuevo State Natural Reserve, Pescadero, Calif., (650) 879-2025, parks.ca.gov/?page_id=523. BEST TIME: Mid-December through March. Gray wolf BEST PLACE TO VIEW: Lamar Valley, Yellowstone National Park, Wyo., (307) 344-7381, nps.gov/yell. BEST TIME: December through May. Grizzly bear BEST PLACE TO VIEW: Grizzly & Wolf Discovery Center, West Yellowstone, Mont., (406) 646-7001, grizzlydiscoveryctr.org. BEST TIME: Year-round. Moose BEST PLACE TO VIEW: Kawuneeche Valley, along the Colorado River in western Rocky Mountain National Park, Colo., (970) 586-1206, nps.gov/romo. BEST TIME: May through September. Orca BEST PLACE TO VIEW: Lime Kiln Point State Park, San Juan Island, Wash., (360) 902-8844, parks.wa.gov/parkpage.asp? selectedpark=lime kiln point. BEST TIME: May through October. Roosevelt Elk BEST PLACE TO VIEW: Prairie Creek Redwoods State Park, Humboldt County, Calif., (707) 465-7347, parks.ca.gov/?page_id=415. BEST TIME: Year-round. Sandhill crane BEST PLACE TO VIEW: the greater sandhill crane, Isenberg Crane Reserve, Lodi, Calif., (209) 948-7708, dfg.ca.gov/regions/3/cranetour. Lesser sandhill cranes: Merced National Wildlife Refuge, Los Banos, Calif., (209) 826-3508. BEST TIME: Mid-September through early March.

I also watched a year-old cub spend a good 45 minutes chewing on a root. Its mother surveyed the nearby audience of German, British, Canadian, Dutch, Australian, and American visitors, their telephoto lenses poking through the windows of a huge
four-wheel-drive tundra buggy parked in the mud 60 feet away. She sniffed the air and quickly went back to her snooze. With the root finally conquered, the cub snuggled next to her and tucked its head out of the wind.

The bears seem at ease with the tourists who travel by plane or train to Churchill each fall. (Even if you were willing to drive 650 miles north from Winnipeg, the highway doesn't go that far.) The largest land predators on earth—males can weigh more than a thousand pounds, or about twice as much as a typical male grizzly—polar bears are not easily spooked. The more curious animals will walk right up to the tundra buggies, stand on their hind legs, and peer into windows nine feet above the ground.

Shrinking ice, lost bears
Like all polar bears, the Churchill animals depend on ice, a resource that's becoming increasingly scarce in the far north.

Even in the best of times, fasting is normal for the Churchill polar bears. When Hudson Bay is frozen, the bears subsist by ambushing seals on the ice. From the time Hudson Bay melts (usually in July) until it freezes up again in November, the bears are landlocked, reduced to a kind of walking hibernation with practically nothing to eat. When the chill returns by October, they gather near the coast and wait for the ice.

Shrinking ice, however, means empty stomachs and, inevitably, dwindling numbers of bears. "I'm very concerned," says polar bear biologist Andrew Derocher, a professor at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. "Under the current scenarios for climate change, we will lose polar bears in many different parts of the Arctic, probably within our lifetime." And because Churchill is at the southern edge of bear country, he fears that these bears—the most accessible population in the world—could be among the first to go.

Although people argue about climate change, there's no doubt that the north is getting warmer and the polar bears are suffering, Derocher says. Later freezes and earlier thaws mean that the bears are staying landlocked three weeks longer than they did just a couple of decades ago. To the untrained eye, the Churchill bears may look burly, powerful, and gorgeous, but the adults are about 60 pounds lighter and a few inches shorter than they were back then. Still, the most troubling trend is the head count: In 1987, 1,194 bears lived in the Churchill area. By 2004 that number had dropped to 935, a 22 percent decrease.

Bear town
Ever yone in Churchill knows the phone number: 675-BEAR (2327). It's the hotline for the Churchill Bear Patrol, a group of government employees who protect people and bears alike from potentially deadly confrontations. Carrying shotguns loaded with cracker shells—essentially flying firecrackers designed to get a bear's attention without causing injury—the patrol members shoo bears out of streets, front yards, and parking lots, and back onto the tundra. Repeat offenders are shot with tranquilizers and shipped to polar bear jail, a complex of 22 cages. Jailed bears don't get fed; the last thing anyone wants is to reward them for visiting town. When Hudson Bay freezes, the detainees are airlifted to the ice.

Back in the 1960s and '70s, polar bears who visited town out of hunger or curiosity could expect a bullet, not a cracker shell. Today, bullets are an absolute last resort. "Everybody protects the bears, because we know they are special animals," says Dave Daley, a local dogsled racer and airplane mechanic.

Although Churchill lies smack-dab in polar bear country, attacks are surprisingly rare. According to Polar Bears International, bears have killed just two people in the town's nearly 300-year history—and one of those was walking around with fresh meat stuffed in his pockets.

The bears deserve credit for the lack of bloodshed, says Jane Waterman, a biology professor at the University of Central Florida who studies polar bear behavior. Although mothers with cubs can be protective and surly, the males tend to be mellow, largely because they don't produce much testosterone in summer and early fall.

View from a tundra buggy
The 20 tourists in my group hang on as our tundra buggy, a vehicle with the seats and windows of a school bus and the speed and handling of a Sherman tank, starts crawling and bouncing over a muddy, rocky trail. Every seat is full, most having been booked months in advance at a cost of several thousand dollars. Late October turns out to be a good time to see bears, especially if you don't insist on a background of white. In early to mid-November the bears are still around, and there's a better chance of snow. "Some people are disappointed if there's no snow, but that's my favorite time to photograph bears," Waterman says. "The fall colors of the tundra are just incredible."

Looking across the vast landscape, as flat and treeless as a Dakota prairie, you may spot white ptarmigan hopping around red willow bushes or even see a scraggly caribou. And when that first bear comes into
view—and the second, and the seventh, and the 10th—you'll feel a rush that justifies your long trip north.

Barring a stunning miscalculation by a caribou, the giant predators will go hungry until the bay freezes. Waterman once saw a bear eat a lemming, a rodent that must have been as filling as a breadcrumb. Another made a game attempt at stalking geese. But these were diversions, not a way to make a living.

For thousands of years polar bears have hunted seals on sea ice, and they won't be able to change their ways just because the ice is disappearing. Theoretically, the Churchill bears could move north where there's more ice—for now, anyway—but geography isn't one of their specialties. Neither is climate change. "They don't know anything about global warming," Waterman says.

Even as their hunger grows deeper and their numbers drop, the bears will remain committed to this place. They'll continue to gather by the coast in absolute faith that the sea will stay frozen long enough to get them through another year.

GENTLE GIANTS

By Deborah Franklin

Gray Whale Facts General Information: Lifespan: 40-plus years Nickname: "Devilfish," for the ferocious, boat-sinking way mothers defended calves against 19th-century whalers Last commercially hunted on a large scale off North American coast: 1946 Estimated Pacific gray whale population in 1946: Nearly extinct Estimated population today: Approximately 20,000 Longest a whale can stay submerged without breathing: 15 minutes Estimated weight of all of the barnacles on the hide of a typical adult: 200 to 400 pounds Migration: Annual round-trip commute from Baja to arctic seas and back: 10,000 miles or more Typical migration speed: 4-6 miles per hour Commute duration each way: 2 to 3 months Loss of body fat during migration: 11-30 percent Family Life: Gestation: 12 to 13 months Birth weight: Up to 1,500 pounds Birth length: 14-16 feet Delivery style: Breech (flukes first) Calving frequency: Every couple of years Family life: Short and sweet. Attentive mothers wean calves at around seven months. Food: Adults' favorite food: Tiny mud-dwelling crustaceans and tube worms Adult's approximate daily food ration in the summer: A ton of crustaceans Daily food ration in winter: Nothing Global Warming: Effect on gray whales: Some experts speculate that climate-related changes in ice flow and formation in northern waters or declines in phytoplankton may be pushing the whales to expand their feeding grounds.

Six of us are squeezed into a fiberglass fishing panga not much bigger than a rowboat when two
40-ton animals surface like submarines a hundred yards off the port side. I cinch my life vest a bit tighter. Each of the adult gray whales steaming straight toward us is about 50 feet long, the length of a semitrailer.

This chance to come eye to
eye—and perhaps finger to
fin—with one of the world's largest creatures is exactly why my fellow travelers and I have come to San Ignacio Lagoon in Baja California. We've all seen whales in the wild before—black-and-white orcas along the fir-trimmed shores of Washington State, or humpbacks in a berg-filled Alaskan bay. But most of those encounters offered only fleeting glimpses. What would it feel like, we whale lovers wondered, to come really close to one of these giants of the deep? What would it be like to touch and be touched by a whale?

To find out, 16 of us had hopped into a van the day before and driven from San Diego to the Tijuana airport, where we boarded a chartered plane. After a two-hour flight we touched down at a dirt landing strip 600 miles to the south. We'd each paid about $2,500 (flight, food, cot, and solar-powered showers and toilets included) to camp for five days on a remote stretch of the Vizcaíno Desert that pokes into the middle of this gray whale nursery on Baja's Pacific side.

No need for binoculars here. Whales breach, poke their heads above the water in exploratory spy hops, and otherwise cavort throughout the protected bay day and night, easily visible—and audible with each deep, steamy breath—from a boat, the beach, or even your tent. From late January to early April, gray whales come here to mate, give birth, and nurse until the calves are strong enough to swim the 5,000 miles north to their summer feeding grounds in the Bering Sea.

The most powerful lure at this UNESCO World Heritage site is a whale behavior that no one can explain. Since the mid- 1970s some gray whales—local fishermen estimate about 10 to 15 percent of those now migrating here each
winter—have sought close human contact, swimming up to small boats to observe and even gently nuzzle passengers. Friendly mother whales seem to encourage their young to make contact, guides say. In fact, some newborn grays that hide behind their moms early in the season are eager to be touched a few weeks later.

The whales aren't seeking food. Grays are baleen whales; instead of teeth, adults have a double row of densely tufted fringe to filter tiny crustaceans from giant mouthfuls of mud. The calves drink only their mothers' milk, a rich cocktail that's 50 percent fat. So neither adult whales nor their offspring have any use for human treats. Instead, they seem drawn to us for the same reason we're drawn to them: curiosity.

On this still February morning on the lagoon, the two whales that have just surfaced abruptly disappear, their heartshaped flukes rippling the water as they dive. We humans hold our breath too, and then gasp. One of the whales, spackled with rough patches of barnacles, has swum just beyond the panga and is doubling back. It nudges the boat with its head and then comes up spouting a heavy mist of fishy whale breath. We squeal and laugh, lightly splashing the water, hoping to bring the whale closer. Suddenly, it lifts its head toward me. At our guide's urging, I reach out and lightly massage its lips. Except for where the barnacles cling, its skin feels like plastic wrap stretched over a thick sponge. The gray could easily tip us. Instead, it delicately swims alongside and underneath us for 20 or 30 minutes, coming close enough to be gently stroked by each of us. Several times, it tilts and lifts its mammoth head partway out of the water, eyes open and searching. We pull off our sunglasses, the better to see and be seen. It's tough to say who's watching whom—and who is enjoying it more.

THE EAGLE HAS LANDED

By Linda Watanabe McFerrin

It's daybreak and we're stomping our feet in the bitter cold beside a dirt road in the Klamath Basin. Our eyes and binoculars are fixed on Hamaker Mountain, a 6,500-foot peak only a mile or two from where our group huddles, near Bear Valley National Wildlife Refuge on the
Oregon-California border. "There's another one," someone whispers. We let out a collective murmur as a bald eagle lifts off from its nest and descends toward the fields and marshes of Bear Valley's sister refuge, the Lower Klamath. Like planes taking off from a runway, the 500 or so eagles roosting in the area this winter have been flying out, one by one, for hours. It's February, and the carcasses of small animals and wildfowl too weak to make it through the winter offer easy pickings for the raptors, which otherwise hunt fish. The eagles will spend most of the day scavenging for food, return to their roosts by sunset, and be ready to take off for the ritual again tomorrow morning.

Hundreds of bird species—from tundra swans and northern pintails to American wigeons—flock to the 174,279-acre Klamath Basin National Wildlife Refuges during the winter months. So do avian enthusiasts, who brave 5 a.m. wake-up calls and frigid weather for the exceptional sightings this area offers. About 500 birders have gathered to attend the Winter Wings Festival, an annual three-day conference held in Klamath Falls, Ore., that promises lectures, workshops, and outings related to raptors, other birds, and more wildlife. Among the many birds featured, the bald eagle is clearly the main draw.

"It may be difficult to understand how a bird outnumbered a thousand to one can be the star until you sit beside someone and watch the reaction when they see their first bald eagle," says B.J. Matzen, an inveterate birder who is also a lawyer for Klamath Wingwatchers, a nonprofit that educates the public about migratory birds in the Klamath Basin. Bald eagles are among North America's largest avians, with an impressive wingspan of six to eight feet, and their distinctive features—bright yellow beaks and talons, snow-white heads and tail feathers—make them easy to identify. But it's their symbolic value that probably accounts for much of their popularity; adopted as the U.S. emblem in 1782, the bald eagle still peers from the back of every one-dollar bill.

Celebrity prestige, however, has not exempted the raptors from near destruction. Once numbering an estimated half million, the eagle population dwindled as North America's human population grew. People competed with the birds for food, hunted them indiscriminately, and polluted the environment with the pesticide DDT, which severely affected the eagles' ability to reproduce. By 1963, only 417 nesting pairs were reported in the contiguous United States. In 1973 Congress took action, declaring the bald eagle an endangered species in all states except Alaska.

The raptors have now rebounded and currently number some 10,000 pairs in the lower 48 states. Last year the Interior Department took the bald eagle off the endangered species list, but kept it protected. Here in the Klamath Basin we see hundreds perched en masse in skeletal cottonwoods, swooping down from solitary lookouts, or standing sentry over snow-covered fields. And for a few hours our group, itself exotically decked out in pom-pommed winter wear, admires the power and resilience of these majestic birds.