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Big
brown bears 2006
Brown bear family
Brown bear cubs
Vili the friendly reindeer
Wolverines
Big
brown bears 2015
Red
squirrels & bullfinch
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When
people think of brown bears, it's usually the grizzlies of Canada,
Alaska and the north-western US that spring to mind. But we have brown
bears in Europe and Scandinavia too and in July 2006 I travelled to
eastern Finland, close to the border with Russia, to watch bears from a
forest hide. It was baited with fish and attracted a higher density of
bears than would normally be seen in the wild, including females with
cubs.
I then continued my journey about 2.5 hours south to another location
in the hope of seeing wolverines, but there we didn't have such good
sightings - two nights in the hides brought us some more distant bears
but no wolverines.
So in July 2015 I returned to Finland, this time a little further south
again but still close to the Russian border. On this visit we had some
great views of wolverines from another baited hide but unfortunately
without enough light to get many decent photographs.
It turned out that some wolverines don't quite deserve their ferocious
reputation because when a brown bear turned up to investigate the food
on the first night, the wolverine we were watching made a hasty exit
and that was the last we saw of our target species. However a second
night in the hide brought another couple of bears, one of which spent
over an hour wandering around.
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