When a huge brown bear was quietly making use of a big tree to reach every bit of that prickly itch he couldn’t scratch himself, a photographer’s camera trap was sneakingly recording it all.
The early morning footage was captured by a trail cam, situated near a camera trap, which was originally set up to gain footage of Siberian tigers. But it instead got this brilliant candid footage of a 2.5-meter-tall (8.2-foot) brown bear looking for relief from a clearly very annoying itch.
Sascha Fonseca, 45, a program manager from Dubai, shot this footage while in the far east of Russia in April, during a camera trap project to photograph Siberian tigers.
Fonseca said: “To me, getting a glimpse into the private world of wildlife, while undisturbed and in their natural habitat, is very special.
“I didn’t expect this large male brown bear rubbing against the tiger marking tree in front of my camera trap. But it goes to show that in the Russian far east, brown bears and Siberian tigers co-exist, and often utilize the same marking trees.
“Camera traps allow me to capture close-up images of secretive wildlife, which I would otherwise not be able to get.
“The fact that you can have cameras out there working for you 24/7 is a major advantage over traditional wildlife photography and one that’s extremely beneficial when you’re photographing rare, secretive, or potentially dangerous wildlife.”
