Settling at a new place.

In the center of the picture is the Grassy Cape with a ranger station and a visitor station on it.

Yesterday I arrived at my new place of work. Actually, it is a old new place, because in the past years I spent many months working as a ranger on the Kuril Lake in Southern Kamchatka Wildlife Refuge. I've in different parts of the Refuge in different seasons. Here in my blog I published many stories about this place and even wrote a photo-book about this lake. My colleage and very talented photographer, Alexey Bezrukov, wrote a lot about this lake too when he spent two years here with his family also working as a ranger. I bet that both Alexey and his wife Tatyana are missing local bears on their new assignment on the Baikal Lake.

The ranger station at the Grassy Cape is my favorite place on the Kuril Lake. This place has the highest density of brown bears in Russia. During this year there were over a thousand bears recorded around the lake. Even with my own eyes I've seen over a hundred of bears per day on many occasions. Even today I've seen at least couple of dosens of them from the window. Therefore in the coming weeks prepare yourself to see many bears in my blog!

How did I end up coming here to work? Well, the tourists season is coming to an end. The season of bad weather is coming. The rangers who work here are going to take vacations during this time. Fall with it's «nasty» weather is my favorite time of year. So I am taking this opportunity to substitute unti the winter comes. In addition to being my favorite place during my favorite weather, this ranger station has the fastest sattelite internet setup in the whole park. That means that you will learn about the local wildlife news in real time!


On this picture you can see the whole station: on the left there are two ranger houses. The larger building to the right is a hotel for visitors. All the buildings are connected by wooden trails. The green square is a helipad.




This is how the morning looked at the Grassy Cape today.


This picture I made before sunrise this morning to test how my newly bought Nikon D4 works in low light situations. I did not have to walk that far to find this bear, just 100 yards from the ranger station.
Originally posted at Обживаюсь на новом месте.