Today, we found yearling Shirley of the Juliet trio Sharon, Shirley, and the Boy Named Sue. She was over 8 miles from where we found her a few days ago but still within the area her mother showed her as a cub. She knows us. We know her. We used nuts you sent to waylay her a few minutes to loosen her collar a notch, grab some hair for DNA, and see how she responded to engorged ticks we removed from her. She ate all the ticks! She popped them with her molars before swallowing them. It was only fair for her to reclaim her lost blood. It was a great meeting with her.
We checked on Lily and family because someone spotted them without Faith last evening. Not a problem. Today, they all were nearly 4 miles from last evening’s sighting and foraging like mad on ant pupae. The warm weather has finally brought on good ant reproduction. Ant larvae and pupae, collectively called ant brood by myrmecologists, are a favorite food, maybe the favorite food. Faith was taking advantage of logs that Lily opened. Sometimes she ate the leftovers after Lily left and sometimes she fed alongside Lily. Hope is outgrowing that privilege. Lily is treating her more like a competitor and is telling her to go find her own food. Hope used to be able to run Lily off food. Now, Lily even blows and swats at Hope when Hope tries to horn in. However, Hope can still plead like a cub and be accommodated at times.
Another favorite food is hazelnuts, which only occasionally have a good crop. The last bumper crop was in 2001 here. Hope pulled down a bush and ate a green hazelnut—shell and all. The shells are still soft this time of year. They ripen in late July and persist into early September, although most are stashed by squirrels or eaten by filbert worms (Cydia latiferreanus) by the end of August. Years ago, the bears showed us that they begin eating them as soon as the nut begins to form. It was great to see little Hope pull down the bush like an expert and home in on the nut. The nuts are camouflaged in green and look a lot like a leaf at this point. They must have an irresistible smell because bears often stop what they are doing to follow their noses to hazelnuts on the bush.
Tomorrow morning at 10 Central Time is the broadcast of Northland Voices on KDLH Channel 3 in Duluth. We hope they put it on their website for all to see. We’ll post the link if they do.
Over 60 of you have put us into the home stretch on the $2,000 matching fund special event drawing that Team Bear put together. The funds have now reached level 4, which means all the prizes have been put into the drawing that runs until tomorrow morning (Sunday 6/19) at 11:00 AM EST. The Photo Album at http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150225187595499.352102.263755115498 has pictures and descriptions of the items. All the money will go toward reducing the debt. Thank you so much. By the time this is done, the debt will be under $56,000. We so much want to get rid of this debt so we can move on to more education, exhibits, and more. As you all know, there is so much to do for bears at home and abroad and together we can and are making a difference.
Thank you for all you are doing.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center