Bill - June 6, 2012After seeing the tent caterpillars near Tower, MN, a couple days ago, we were alert to GPS patterns that might suggest bears foraging for them. This morning, Sue saw what she was looking for. She said, “From Sharon’s movements, she’s either found a patch of tent caterpillars or a male.” She joined Sharon. She was right on both counts. Sharon and Bill, both 2-year-olds, were together in a patch of tent caterpillar defoliation. The diet for both was tent caterpillars with horsetails on the side.
Forest floor littered with leaf bits eaten by forest tent caterpillars - June 6, 2012
Sharon is not yet ready for Bill’s advances. She allows grooming but anything more means she gets up, moves 10 feet away, and lies down again. It may take the presence of a male to get the hormones flowing toward readiness. Bill’s response to Sharon’s moving is to sniff the area where she had been lying and then lie down there himself. He is very attentive. We remember big Lumpy following Midge for over 9 days, fighting off the competition, and hanging in there. With Bill being only 2, we’ll see if he can weather the competition as Sharon gives off scent signals of increasing readiness and draws bigger males.
Sharon - June 6, 2012Sharon is a daughter of Juliet, and Bill is the son of Juliet’s territorial neighbor RC. Bill occasionally made the sweet high friendly grunts to Sharon today but nothing like the eruption of grunts we observed when he saw the carcass of his older sister Jo a couple weeks ago.
Bird nest with eggs found on hike in to Sharon - June 6, 2012We keep learning and continue to be amazed at the observations that have been made possible with our kinder, gentler, trust-based research methods. This observable clan is so valuable to the advancement of human understanding of black bear life. We want to continue the research as long as possible and share the information with the world through the Hope Education Building. The fresh favorite nuts you sent from Nuts.com have been a big help whenever we had to change GPS batteries or radio-collars. We thank you for every success we’ve had as a result, including the observations and video today.
On May 29 we stood in gently falling rain for 3 hours waiting for Juliet to allow us to change her GPS batteries. She and her cubs were all up a tree. We managed to catch a bit of video between the raindrops and it's posted at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sHnF00IaGNM.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center