Herring GullWe spent midday walking heavily-used bear trails, hoping to document bear reactions to us. Would they approach us for food? Or would they retreat? No action. We may have to walk the trails in low light when bears are especially on the move. Now during hyperphagia is the best time to be testing bear reactions around community feeding sites.
I’ve only heard a high shriek from the friendly gull twice. Those are the only times I’ve heard it from any gull. Once was when it grabbed my finger hidden beneath the piece of spam I was offering. It felt my finger, shrieked, leaped back with wings flared, and looked at me in a way that either said “I’m sorry” or “Why did you have your finger where it’d startle me?” Tonight it shrieked when it was startled by one of Braveheart’s cubs inches away peering out from under the object the gull had landed on. If the shriek was designed to give pause to a potential attacker, it worked. All three cubs ran for a white pine while the gull flew off. It circled back, saw that the cubs had vacated, and landed for a piece of bologna.
New England LuncheonIn British Columbia, a conservation officer was suspended and then transferred for refusing to kill two orphan cubs that he instead put into a rehabilitation program. I wonder if he had read the recent article entitled “Management Implications for Releasing Orphaned, Captive-Reared Bears Back to the Wild.” in the latest issue of The Journal of Wildlife Management. The article supports the conservation officer’s action. Too often, agencies have killed cubs, fearing that they have lost some of their fear of people and might be a liability risk to the agency that releases them. The article puts those fears to rest. The article is so new that the CO’s superior might not have seen it. Glad to see a CO do the right thing.
Still working on the Den Cam application. It, too, is the right thing to do.
The New England Bear Head Luncheon in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, is coming up October 24, 2015.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
All photos taken today unless otherwise noted.