Juliet and family heading off - May 19, 2012
June grooming Aspen - May 19, 2012Braveheart, June, Jo, and Juliet all needed their GPS batteries changed today, and we got around to all of them. Most exhausting was trying to follow Lily who we suspected was with a male. She moved fast, and if there were a male with her, he moved faster. We never saw him. Jo is traveling widely, too, same as Braveheart. June still has her yearlings, so she isn’t into high gear yet. She’s in the clover patch eating clover. The females on the move are foraging little, just sniffing the branches they pass and moving on.
A video of June and her yearlings from May 8 has been posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWKrz2jdOgU.
Monarch butterfly on lilacs - May 19, 2012
Red Admiral butterfly on lilacs - May 19, 2012A little nature note, the south wind that fanned the forest fire toward Ely a couple days ago brought with it clouds of migrating monarch butterflies—more than any of us have ever seen. Before the wind, we saw none this year. Yesterday, they were all over. We couldn’t stop talking about it. Today, a clump of lilac bushes had maybe a hundred flitting around it along with Red Admiral (Vanessa atalanta) and Compton Tortoiseshell (Nymphalis vaualbum) butterflies, big boreal bumblebees (Bombus Subterraneobombus borealis), hummingbird moths (Hemaris spp.), and more. We have never seen so many monarchs.
Jo - May 19, 2012
Braveheart - May 19, 2012The BBC is working around the clock to gather and edit up-to-date footage for tomorrow’s Planet Earth Live. You can show your support for the bears by posting on the Planet Earth Live Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/PlanetEarthLive. More info on the helpful things you can do can be found here http://www.bear.org/website/planet-earth-live.html.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center