Mom and the kids

On 12 May 2012, I spent a wonderful (17 hour!) day of scenery and bears, thanks to friends Cathy and Terry, who so kindly invited me along with them! We even spent some of the time in B.C. (British Columbia), the next province to our west, and were so lucky to see six bears in total, including this Black Bear and her two gorgeous cubs. As you can see, one of her little ones was a Cinnamon Bear, which you don't see very often. Our first Bear was a Black Bear that looked rather like a huge rock in the distance. The second sighting was an adult Cinnamon Bear, after which we saw an adult Black Bear. The final sighting was this beautiful family of Mum with her two cubs. None of the Bears approached cars, hoping for food. They quietly went about their feeding, for the most part without even lifting their eyes from the ground. The usual "thoughtless" people were there, too, getting out of their cars and approaching, so that they could get closer photos. Of course, these cubs were so cute, but all these Bears are wild and wildlife tends to be unpredictable. You really would think that people could keep this in mind and not approach, but stay safely in their cars - and give the animals plenty of space and respect. The weather was so good that day, but the sun was very harsh and played havoc with my images. Perhaps I should add that I probably used full zoom (my Panasonic FZ40 had 32x), lol!!!