June 3-4, 2023, Khutze Inlet: A Hummingbird Welcome and A Little Bear Drama

Posted June 17 from Ketchikan, Alaska

Stunning Khutze Inlet has many moods.

Friends often ask if we always go back to the same places with Tenacious, or if we look for new ones. This year, as we hurry north to get to Alaska as quickly as possible; we pause for a couple of nights to enjoy an old favorite anchorage of ours, Khutze (Kootz) Inlet.

Standing on the bow, watching the windlass spin out the anchor chain, I’m surrounded by the high-pitched twittering of mud swallows. The little flock seems thrilled to see us, swooping through the rigging and dodging safety lines. One stops for a breath on a lower spreader and appears to make an announcement.

A very happy rufous hummingbird

That’s when I see the first hummingbird, intensely investigating a cleated hank of red rope that is our inner staysail halyard. As I watch, as second and then a third one appear. Then a fourth. Each one zips around, hovering over anything red. The red gas can on the stern deck is hugely interesting! Red might mean flowers! I hustle down below and bring up the big bouquet of lilacs, lupines and bachelor buttons I’ve gathered at anchorages along the way. I set it on the stern deck not far from the red gas can. In moments the first hummingbird discovers the flowers, joyously dipping its slender beak into blossom after blossom. Its friends soon arrive with their iridescent red and green feathers flashing in the late day sun. They swarm the blossom buffet with great alacrity! There are no lilacs in this remote place. I wonder if they enjoy what must be a new, exotic nectar flavor. It seems they do!

The hummingbirds disappear as a squall rolls in with buffeting winds that send us pirouetting around the hook. We move below for dinner and an early night, lulled by the gentle drumming of fat raindrops on hatch covers.

 

 

June 4: We Find Some Bears!

What a handsome fellow!

 It’s still raining at first light and low tide. Ugh. Not enough visibility for bear watching. We snuggle back in for a few more dreams. Ninety minutes later things are looking up. Captain Pat suits up and drops the dinghy for a crab hunt in front of the waterfall. Armed only with a fishing net, he comes back an hour later with dinner. Meanwhile, I scan the sedge-rich estuary for grizzly bears. I’m rewarded with the sight of a bear-shaped, whole-wheat-toast-colored object in the distance. Hard to tell if it’s a bear or a big chunk of wood washed down the valley with the spring floods. Mindful of my “grizzly deer” episode last year, I keep a close watch. At last, a smaller, darker-brown head pops up nearby. It’s not a new cub, but likely a yearling, and it orbits its mother like a small satellite. And then another little brown head pops up: a pair of yearling cubs still with mom.

We must wait a couple of hours for the tide to rise enough for a dinghy trip up the shallow river channel north of the estuary. A mile or so in, Patrick spots a good-sized cinnamon-colored bear, perhaps a three-year old. With binocs, we watch it browse the sedge grass until it moves farther away. We follow along the crumbling mud banks of one of myriad shallow channels that cut through to the south side of the estuary. Depths vary; sometimes we putt along slowly under motor, sometimes we pull up the motor and use a paddle to push through narrow, rock-strewn and sunken-log bedecked channels. Far ahead we spot the mama grizzly and her two yearlings. We lose sight of them for a moment. Suddenly, the cubs are in the river channel, swimming toward the forest to hide.

Looking back to where we first saw them, two adult bears are fighting  (or something ... and it doesn't look as if the sow is too interested...) It must be the sow and bear we saw earlier. The battle is short. After a few dramatic clinches and some tussling, the young (male?) bear scampers away toward the valley above while the mama re-unites with her cubs. We quietly slink back to Tenacious.

Hummingbirds and bears … aren’t we blessed?