Wildlife
Polar Bears: 2 Live Cameras — Wapusk National Park
Two cameras on a cape in Hudson Bay, in Wapusk National Park, Canada. Watch in October and November, when the bears gather to wait for the sea to freeze.
What you can see
Cape Churchill is a Canadian headland reaching out into Hudson Bay. Wapusk National Park, which contains it, has one of the highest densities of polar bear maternity dens in the world, and two cameras show the same cape from different angles.
The first is the wide view of the cape. In October and November the bears waiting for the sea to freeze gather along the shore. The ice is the platform they hunt seals from, so whether it forms is a question of whether they eat.
The second is a different angle on the same cape, and sometimes catches a mother walking with her cubs.
What these two convey best is that the bears are waiting. Until the ice comes they eat almost nothing and wait. So the picture often does not move. In this place, a screen where nothing is happening is exactly what is happening.
Cameras you can watch now: 2
All 2 are live video. Tap one to open it in the camera list.
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Live video, Oct-Nov
Polar bears at Cape Churchill
Manitoba, Wapusk National Park · Wildlife · Nature
Cape Churchill, a headland reaching into Hudson Bay. Wapusk National Park holds one of the densest concentrations of maternity dens anywhere, and in October and November bears gather on the shore waiting for the sea to freeze. The ice is the platform they hunt seals from.
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Live video, Oct-Nov
Polar bears at Cape Churchill 2
Manitoba, Wapusk National Park · Wildlife · Nature
Another angle on the same headland, where a mother and her cubs sometimes walk through together. Until the ice forms the bears wait, eating almost nothing.
When to watch
October and November. Those are the two months the provider gives, when the bears come to the shore to wait for the freeze-up.
The offset is 14 hours in October and 15 from mid-November. Local noon is 02:00 the next day in Japan in October, and 03:00 in late November. So the Japanese night and early morning are the local day.
October and November are very short days this far north — less than half the day is light at all — so in Japan only a narrow band from night to morning gives a lit picture.
The screen is white with snow and ice, and spotting a bear takes practice. It is quicker to look for a yellowish mass slightly off the colour of the snow than to look for something moving.
If it isn't showing
The same town of Churchill has the Aurora camera. Its season is February and March, offset from the polar bears' October and November, so you can visit the same place twice a year in different seasons.
Both cameras also appear on the Canada page. For animals in snow, the closest Japanese pages are The cranes of Kushiro Marsh and Wintering Swans. Animal cameras are gathered under Wildlife.
Choosing an hour to open them is covered in Which cameras are in daylight now.
Where to find Polar Bears
Agencies publishing the cameras on this page
- explore.org (Deep links and embeds OK, no image reuse) — Official site
The footage belongs to each agency. This site is an unofficial guide, and each sample frame was copied once per camera under that agency's terms of use.