Yearling leaps from scale to safety of a white pine - May 2, 2012Except for radio-tracking June when her GPS unit failed to send a location for several hours, and checking the habitat and foods available in an area where Dot’s locations were concentrated, it was an office day. It was time to catch up on data logging, prep new GPS units, attend to technical data storage needs, and do some writing and calling.
Forest tent caterpillars on roundleaf dogwood (Cornus rugosa) - June 11, 2012The search for June failed and we wondered if we would have to fly to find her. Then, her GPS unit sent a reading from the south side of Cranberry Lake—just outside the study area. Makes us think these bears spin their collar around to foil the GPS tracking so they can operate in stealth mode. We may never know what June’s ‘secret mission’ was, but she is back now.
Jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) - June 11, 2012The hike to check out the area Dot had been in a few days ago did not find a tent caterpillar infestation. It was a nice cool lush lowland with and overstory of black ash, huge aspens, and an understory dominated by sedges and ferns. We found a dozen or so forest tent caterpillars—not enough to draw a bear to the area. Our brief search revealed foraging on jewelweed (Impatiens capensis) and interrupted ferns (Osmunda claytonia).
Fresh claw marks on aspen in Dot's area - June 11, 2012One of the data logging tasks today was entering bear weights from the scale into a spreadsheet and identifying the bear from the pictures captured. Sue refers to it as the ‘Magic Scale’ because it captures the weight and images of the bear and stores them on a computer in the office. We just make sure the scale is baited with food and the computer program is working. However, the task of entering the data from the files into a spreadsheet is tedious. Every so often, one of the pictures brings a smile and lightens the task. The picture of the yearling caught in mid-air as it leaps off the scale to the safety of the nearby white pine is one!
A bear stripped the leaflets off this interrupted fern (Osmunda claytonia) - June 11, 2012One little nature note on the turtle nest from a couple updates ago. The broken eggs sat undisturbed by the nest as bears ignored them. Last night, an animal cleaned them up. We had seen a gray fox. The only tracks in the dirt by the eggs were that of a fox. Where other turtle nests have been dug up and the eggs eaten, we have never found a bear track. We’ll see what the trail cams in a turtle nesting area will tell us. The trail cams were supplied by Lily Fans and have helped us learn and educate.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center