Jewel is doing a good thing for bears. While congress is trying to put through a bill that would include killing whole families of bears in dens in Alaska, a video of Jewel in her den with Fern and Herbie is being used by “The Dodo” page to stop it. 
Friendly CrowThey are asking people to contact their U.S. Senators to stop it. It’s already passed the house. https://www.thedodo.com/us-house-alaska-bear-wolf-2268102226.html. You have to scroll down 6 clicks to get to the video. It’s a 3-minute clip from a video I took on March 18, 2012. Jewel has soulful eyes when she glances at the camera. Then she rises up and shows cute Fern and Herbie that have their eyes open. Jewel came out of the den—I believe to pass waste—pausing for some nice video of her face before she went 20-30 feet away from the den. While she was gone, the cubs played and didn’t squawk for her. When she returned, she hardly glanced at the inconsequential biologists as she entered the den and settled in. The Dodo page picked a great video to use to help bears. I hope the U.S. Senate hears from many people and kills the bill.
A Lily Fan wondered which mothers will be having cubs this year. He wants to come back for a course and suspects this is the year. Who is having cubs?
Chickadee turning flipsThe two bears I am most anxious to see with cubs are 10-year-old Lily and her grandmother 30-year-old Shadow.
Others who are a special joy are Lily’s 6-year-old daughter Faith, also 17-year-old Donna who has been having litters of four lately, 15-year-old Braveheart, 12-year-old Shannon (daughter of Donna), 11-year-old Bow, 8-year-old Star, 6-year-old Willow (daughter of Donna), 6-year-old Wendy (daughter of Donna), 6-year-old Daisy (daughter of Bow), and 12-year-old Ursula (daughter of Shadow). I could be wrong on Daisy. I expected her to have cubs at 3 or 4, but here she is at six. We’ll see what this nice bear shows us this year.
4-year-old Ellie (daughter of Lily) and 4-year-old Ember (daughter of June) could have cubs this year. Eleven lesser known females who turned four or more in Shadow’s clan this January could also have cubs.
Judy McClure’s daughter wrote a beautiful summary of Judy’s life for the GoFundMe page she set up so Judy and her family can have what may be their last get-together this summer. https://www.gofundme.com/judy-mcclures-joy-of-life-bucket.
Crow having wordsAre chickadees aerial acrobats? Out the window, a chickadee was coming for a sunflower seed. I clicked the camera to catch it in flight. I didn’t see what it did. All I would have seen with my eyes was a blur of wing motion. The camera eye froze the action enough to see that the chickadee turned upside down to turn sharply and land.
The trusting crow is back early this mild winter. Usually it’s March. This year it’s mid-February and 52°F. She stood on the railing watching me at my desk. She didn’t freak when I picked up the camera and pointed it at her. She’s seen it before, but she did have words. I don’t know crow language. I don’t know if she was telling other (unseen) crows about the date mash she’d discovered, or if she was complaining that the squirrels and other birds had eaten most of the sunflower seeds. I say ‘she’ because she is on the small side, and females are smaller than male crows.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center