Fall has finally come to the Kronotsky Nature Reserve. Animals enjoy the abundance of food and prepare themselves for long and severe winter.

Usual for the Kronotsky Nature Reserve pictures.

One of Villain’s children patrols the bank of the lake.

The abundance of easily accessible food made the bears’ bellies look like the beer ones.

One of the bears often comes close to the house of the workers of the nature reserve. It seems that growing there crowberry is more to its taste than anywhere else (even though it’s scattered all over across the tundra in an incredible amount). In some places there are so many crowberries that it’s impossible to walk without stepping on them.

Is it the volcanic ash of Kizimen that affected so positively the harvest?

The spawning of sockeye salmon in the waters of the Kurile Lake is one of the most spectacular pictures on Kamchatka.

The Kurile Lake, the largest spawning ground for sockeye salmon in Eurasia, has a great fishery value. Fish spawn both in its shallows and in the rivers flowing into it. Those which has already entered the lake don’t hurry up to start spawning. They form dense clusters, consisting of tens of thousands individuals and looking like large monolithic spots from the helicopter. What is interesting is that sockeye salmon fills the lake not randomly, but moving along its banks in a clockwise direction.

Splashing fish tease standing on the beach hungry bears… This year more than two million sockeye salmon entered the lake, which is more than enough for their reproduction.

The river banks have already been painted in bright yellow for more than a month. The workers of the reserve call these flowers Kronotsky sunflowers, but in fact it’s certainly marsh groundsel.

That’s how bears get to know each other.

Alice hunts a ground squirrel.

And enjoys delicious bog bilberry.

Сhanterelles.

Half of Kamchatka is seen from this point of Krasheninnikov Volcano. Behind the northern crater there is the Kronotsky Lake with small islands on the water surface. Kizimen Volcano slightly smokes on the horizon…

The breakfast of one of the numerous seals living in the coastal salt lake.

This picture was taken at dawn not very long time ago. Look how Alice changed. She completely shed the remains of winter fur and gained weight. She stopped feeding her grown up children and now can put herself in order before long winter.

Deer mating season is going to begin very soon. The deer with powerful antlers at the picture won’t have any competitors for sure.

All around are only the youngsters like this.

One day the photographer decided to play a joke on this deer. He put a huge tripod on his head and made its legs look at the sky. The deer took him for a competitor and started prancing in his direction. At first it was funny, but when the mighty beast was about twenty meters away from the joker, he immediately put off the “antlers” and began begging for mercy in a human voice. The deer was quite surprised to find out that it was a man in front of it, and not a competitor. With the sigh of disappointment, it went away.

via shpilenok