Gray fox - October 20, 2013Accumulation was less than an inch, but the ground is white. We aren’t hearing of any bear activity. Aster last left the community feeding site around 2 AM on October 18, and we haven’t heard of any bear visiting any community feeding site since. What makes that interesting on a continental scale is that bears in this region head to dens when the time is right whether food is available or not. Bears could continue feeding at community feeding sites here throughout the winter like they sometimes do in eastern states, but they don’t. In eastern states, bears evolved where nuts and acorns can be found all winter in years with bumper crops. It pays to be flexible there. Here, there’s never a bumper crop of nuts, and bears can’t be fooled into staying up. They begin slowing down around the end of August, and one pregnant female actually denned up before the end of August.
Chickadees in the snowAt our community feeding site, visitors in recent days have been a pair of raccoons that registered weights of 35 pounds each and a gray fox that weighed 12.5 pounds.
Aster registered her last GPS location at 8:18 PM last night right after venturing away from her den for a drink at a lakeshore and returning to her den site. Her GPS batteries were on their 13th day and overdue to expire. Without GPS, we’re back to monitoring her by telemetry like in the old days.
Gray fox - October 20, 2013Lily and cubs have been concentrating their activity in two areas lately. One area was in a cedar swamp and the other in an upland. They are now concentrating entirely in the upland—the drier choice for a den. We’ll let them settle in and get committed before checking on possibilities for a Den Cam there.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
All photos taken today unless otherwise noted.