Chickadee puffed up for insulationThis 102-second flashback of 5-month-old Bud expertly feeding on blueberries shows a lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZEkpSMN7nc. He is feeding alone, as family members usually do to avoid competition. It’s not so much that mothers teach their cubs how to feed, it’s that they lead them to food patches and the cubs know what is good.
Bud is quickly color-picking ripe, blue blueberries. Small green ones are ignored as is a red, half-ripe one. He hardly chews them. Berries of this size are mostly swallowed whole. The berries go into the big, thin-walled, stretchy fundic region of the stomach, which serves as a holding compartment to accommodate fast feeding. Then the berries pass through a constriction into the small, thick-walled, muscular pyloric region which acts like a gizzard and grinds the berries apart for digestion in the intestines. Green berries would be a waste to eat because they are hard and resist being ground up. They mostly pass whole through the digestive system.
Bud’s fast-moving lips are sensitive and selective. Bears ingest little debris. Eating like a bear should mean eating quickly but carefully.
Hairy woodpecker in minus 18°FFollowing bears, we often see them high-grading blueberry bushes, gathering the obvious clusters of ripe berries and quickly moving on to the next bush without thoroughly cleaning the ripe berries from each bush.
Later, when 3 of us were picking blueberry ourselves, two of us picked like we normally would, getting all the ripe berries from one bush before going on to the next—picking thoroughly with minimal movement. The third person picked like a bear, quickly grabbing only the easy bunches and moving on to the next bush. We didn’t measure, but picking like a bear gleaned nearly twice as many berries as picking like a human.
But maybe bears are more flexible than we give them credit for. Bud might have used a combination of the two strategies. Ripe berries were not that abundant in his patch, and he might have done a more thorough human-like job than we have seen other bears do.
Today, was a cold (minus 18F), sunny day to stay inside at the desk. Out the window, a black-capped chickadee puffed up its feathers to maximize insulation and a female (no red on head) hairy woodpecker checked the camera in the window for only an instant before further attacking a block of calorie-rich suet.
Tomorrow, we hope to fix the den cam view of Holly’s activities.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
All photos taken today unless otherwise noted.