Den abandoned by Lily Using the coordinates sent by Lily's GPS unit earlier this month, Mike and Lorie checked three areas she had used before moving to the deep rock den.
On the evening of October 16, after dark (~8:30 PM) Lily and family arrived at the location she explored for over a week. At first she split between two focus points—one in a swamp and the other in an upland. Then she focused only on the upland and increasingly on one location there. Mike and Lorie found a very well used bed there and no sign of digging a den. A piece of Lily’s ribbon in the bed verified that it was hers.
Mike in denAfter 1:49 PM on October 24, the family moved 450 yards northeast and dug a den. Mike and Lorie found a fresh den big enough for Mike to curl up in. The lack of leaves on top of the dirt and rocks they dug out shows how fresh it is. But somehow Lily decided not to use it. We are reminded of how she had decided not to use a den she made in the fall of 2010 before selecting the wet den in the swamp where Faith and Jason were born in 2011.
Lily's bedAbout 5 PM (between 4:55 and 5:06 PM) on October 25, the family left this den they made (or enlarged) in less than a day and moved 200 yards to a spot very familiar to Lily. It was the place she encountered June back in 2010, sparking her second separation from Hope. They arrived about 6:33 PM and stayed less than a day. Mike and Lorie found no sign of den-making there. Sometime between 5:15 and 5:45 PM, they began roaming and exploring. By 7:05 PM, they had moved only a third of a mile. It’s possible Lily was investigating potential den sites. It’s unlikely they were looking for food because there is nothing to eat in the forest now.
Black ashThen, it looked like Lily made a decision about 7:05 PM. That’s when they picked up speed and lined out straight for the deep rock den, covering at least 1.48 miles in one hour and 17 minutes. That’s 1.15 miles an hour, which is comparable to summer speeds. We are pegging the time of arrival at the deep rock den on the first picture of her there at 8:22 PM showing an upset face as she ran past the trail camera. We suspect she was evicting Cole and Ember from her den.
Big-toothed aspen
October 29, 2013What Mike and Lorie were trying to discover today was what led up to the move to the deep rock den. Den re-use is so uncommon that we wondered whether she had tried to make other dens that didn’t pan out. We don’t know why she abandoned the nice den Mike and Lorie found today. We remember another year when June investigated the deep rock den before moving to her favorite rock den that she had used 3 times, setting the record for den re-use in our over four decades of research. And Aster’s reuse of her den from last winter was a matter of necessity. Lily, Ellie, and Eli denned unusually late for this area. Maybe they had a hard time making the decision to re-use her den of two winters ago. More data are needed. The study goes on.
Big-toothed aspen
October 16, 2013Much has changed since Lily arrived at the first place Mike and Lorie investigated today. Leaves have fallen, leaving only the skeletons of the summer and fall beauty. Some trees look dead without their leaves. No tree looks more dead than the black ash trees (Fraxinus nigra) of this area. But the life that will enable their resurrection next spring is still within them. This year held only a short period of glory for these trees—just over 3 months. With the late spring, most black ash did not leaf out until the second week of June, and they dropped their leaves in mid-September.
We’re looking forward to the Hinckley gathering with Lily Fans in just over a week.
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.