After arriving home at 3:30am on Sunday morning from Jamaica, I was back at the airport on Monday morning heading to Fort Smith, NWT, spending the week at Wood Buffalo National Park. The first day on the way to the site we saw 12 black bears (Ursus americanus).

The one bear was grazing at the side of the road and when the truck stopped it came a little closer and sat down and watched us.

We only saw one bison the whole day.

When we arrived at the site a bear came wandering into the clearing.

It spent a couple of hours grazing around the site.

We saw about 4 bears on the way back to town.

One evening we headed down to the Rapids of the Drown to see the American White Pelicans (Pelecanus erythrorhynchos).

I had brought my big zoom lens.

They have the second largest average wingspan of any North American bird, after the California condor.

One of the air quality techs from from the Government of the Northwest Territories Environment was down from Yellowknife for the week. He is an avid bird and wildlife photographer.

Sunset over the Slave River. The weather the first two days were sunny and hot, the temperature in Fort Smith when we landed on Monday was 24 degrees C. By Wednesday morning it dropped to 5 degrees C.

There were just as many bears each day we headed out to the site.

We saw a few “brown” black bears or cinnamon bears. That was something to see, it was the first time seeing one.

This one was a darker brown colour.

We even saw a bear up in a tree.

WE stopped at Little Buffalo Falls on the Thursday.

In the spring it is always an impressive waterfall.

It was a good week in Fort Smith, even got some work done. My colleague and I both had our luggage bumped on the flight from Edmonton to Fort Smith on the Monday. The plane was 200 lb over its weight. After they took our names and numbers, I asked if there was any compensation for us, since we didn’t have our bags. The girl came back out with $40 cash each. It bought our beer. Our bags didn’t end up coming until Tuesday afternoon. Looking into the cockpit on the return flight to Edmonton.