Dot's den - Nov 19, 2011We learned yesterday that the landowners rejected our request to put a Den Cam in Juliet’s den. The background story is interesting but one to save for another day. Juliet is due to have cubs and would have been perfect for solar power and cell phone coverage. Not to be, we guess.
So, today we checked solar and cell phone possibilities near 11-year-old Dot’s den, but she is in a cell phone dead zone due to blockage by an unfortunate ridge. We’ll explore a high ridge soon to see if conditions are better and still within the distance we can be from the den without losing too much signal strength due to excessive cable length.
Dot was part of Blackheart’s first litter (2000) as seen in “The Man Who Walks With Bears” which premiered on Animal Planet back in March 2001. She’s the cub with the white dot on her chest that Lynn weighs (in Blackheart’s presence) and says “Six pounds!” In 2002, after family break-up in May, Dot got stern reminders from Mom Blackheart and Grandma Shadow to stay out of the way. The reminders included a bite on the foreleg. A couple weeks later, she moved out of their territories and remained in a small area where she was unusually cautious of danger. When we tried to join her to see how her leg was healing, she circled and circled out of sight before finally believing “It’s me, bear.” She never returned to Blackheart’s and Shadow’s territories.
heat-sensing images of Dot & cubs 2003In 2003, she became the unnamed star in a BBC documentary that used infra-red sensors to reveal heat-loss patterns in mothers and their newborn cubs. For that, she allowed Lynn into her den and even raised a leg to let Lynn put the tiny sensor/camera underneath her to view the cubs. She knew his voice, scent, and green fleece jacket. Once, when he stepped away briefly during a blizzard and came back white instead of green, she lunged defensively at him. Lynn spoke and held out his hand. She sniffed it, calmed down, and let the filming continue peacefully. A clip of the BBC filming will be uploaded to http://www.youtube.com/user/bearstudy#g/u later tonight.
Glenn and Nancy have done most of the radio-tracking and radio-collaring of Dot since then. She knows their voices and trusts them implicitly. She made a noteworthy movement in 2010 to the water tower at the edge of Ely, the “Coolest Small Town in America.” She wasn’t impressed. She turned around and made her way some 6 miles back into her territory, passing through the North American Bear Center property on the way.
While walking in the woods today looking for sunny openings to place the den shed and solar panels, we couldn’t help thinking about all you have done these past couple years to bring us to this debt-free point. We thought of the classrooms that did fundraisers. We thought of the heartfelt letters we got and the comments we saw with your donations. We wondered who the anonymous people were who came through in pinches. We thought of the names we saw over and over. We thought of the spontaneous FUNdraisers you created on Lily’s Facebook page. We thought of how you responded to matching fund opportunities when anonymous angels surprised us with major incentives. Thank you for all of it.
We came in from the field to find copies of the new 2012 calendars and marveled again at the crisp details in the eyes and fur in many of the pictures (Sorry for the pricing error last night. Some early birds got a real bargain.) We noticed that Dot didn’t make it into this year’s calendar of Shadow’s clan. She’s not a bear we saw enough to get a good picture. If she gets a den cam and has cubs, we will all learn more about her in the months ahead.
It looks like you are doing well voting for Northern Lights Wildlife Society at http://www.avivacommunityfund.org/ideas/acf11449.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center