When polar bears congregate in the fall around Churchill, Manitoba, they are hungry – and residents have to be careful.

All children are bused to school, no matter where they live, and traps ring the town to keep bears out.

Two intrepid area women, Sally Arata of Veazie and Mary Dysart Hartt of Dixmont, went to Churchill last fall to photograph the bears. They will show their slides at the Fields Pond Nature Center in Holden at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 21.

“Bears don’t eat much unless they’re eating seals,” Hartt explained. They hunt on the frozen reaches of Hudson Bay, waiting patiently by the seals’ breathing holes. Once the ice breaks up in June, they are forced to come inland, where there is virtually nothing to eat on the barren tundra.

Once the bears assemble in Churchill, waiting for the ice to freeze again in November, they are hungry indeed.

Hartt and Arata were on a photography tour led by Len Rue Jr. and Michael Francis.

Every day they went out in polar buggies. The vehicles were built high to keep them above the bears, but that did not preclude close contact – the bears could get under the buggies and look up at the photographers through the grated floor.

“We could feel their breath,” Hartt said.

The photographers put beanbags on the sills of the windows to have a place to rest their cameras. One beanbag fell to the ground; in an instant, a bear shot to the spot and devoured the bag.

Adapted to live in bitter cold, polar bears are formidable creatures. They are 3 to 4 feet high at the shoulder when on all fours, and a male can weigh up to 1,400 pounds. They can run 25 miles an hour for short distances.

Yet the slides taken by Hartt and Arata show the bears in familial poses – nuzzling each other, seeming to dance together and gazing off into the distance.

Females may have one to three cubs, depending on their body fat at the time of gestation. The cubs stay with their mothers for two to three years.

“They mind,” Hartt said. “There are no wayward babies whatsoever. We as mothers were quite impressed.”

She met Arata when both joined the Bangor Camera Club a few years ago.

They found out about photography tours through the club and are eager to try more – a trip to Tanzania is planned in January. Each has a Nikon camera with a 500-millimeter lens.

Asked to offer tips to aspiring photographers, Hartt said, “Join the Camera Club.”

“Keep a camera in the car at all times, and be prepared to stop when something grabs you,” Arata said. “It’s best to shoot in the early morning and evening, because the key to a spectacular picture is light.”

“The Polar Bears of Churchill” will be shown at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 21, at Fields Pond Nature Center, 216 Field Pond Road, Holden.

The cost is $5 for Maine Audubon members, $6 for nonmembers.