Today, "Taught" caught 5½ minutes of Holly doing something I never saw before—digging a deep body-sized hole in the snow and frolicking in it. She was having a blast. At the end, she just walked away to be normal again. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jS_56AaXICE
WoodchuckOut the window at the WRI, a woodchuck made its first appearance up on the second floor deck, which made me snap two quick ID pictures that look entirely different in the lights just 8 feet and seconds apart. The right ear and the spots of sparse fur look familiar, but I can’t remember whether it is a male or a female. I’ll have to look it up.
I was wrong again about the redpolls departing for the far north. A snowstorm yesterday brought them back in full force. The picture below shows a portion of them.
However, with the snow melting and bears about to show up, it is bears I think about most. The last two years have been unusual with serious droughts and this past year with bears also being forced out of big areas by forest fires in Minnesota and across the border in Canada. Bears were a problem all over but hardly so here in Eagles Nest Community with the diversionary feeding that has given this community a reputation for its LACK of bear problems now for over half a century. Now is a time of learning. We saw bears coughing up blood, probably from smoke inhalation that was bad for people here but nothing like it was for bears that were forced out of their home areas by the fires. We saw lean mothers that had lost cubs and some that had very small cubs that likely would not have made it without the diversionary food. We are wondering if we will see any of these bears this year to see how they fared. We took pictures last year, as usual, and catalogued the bears to identify them in case we saw them again.
Redpolls return en masse
Even more, I’m looking forward to seeing 15-year-old Lily who should have cubs after missing a year after the drought of 2020. Her last litter was in 2019 when she had two male and two female cubs that we saw as two-year-olds last summer. When food is short mothers sometimes take an extra year to rebuild the body stores needed for successful pregnancies, although we seldom see failed pregnancies in this community with the diversionary feeding by many here. At 15, Lily is in the peak of reproduction when black bears have the largest litters. We wonder if she will have another litter of four. Another mother expected to have cubs this year is 23-year-old RC whose litter of 2020 was four like Lily had in 2019 when she was 12. Another mother we look forward to seeing is 19-year-old Colleen who had three cubs in 2020 and is due again. Others we expect to have cubs are 16-year-old Bow, 13-year-old Jewel, 11-year-old Oliana, 10-year-old Fern (who many saw born back in 2012), and five younger females. We also are looking forward to seeing 35-year-old Shadow who has not had cubs since she was 28, but she is a joy to see surviving year after year and is now the second oldest black bear (captive or wild) on record.Along with looking forward to who is having cubs, I look forward to the good times of being with Black Bear Field Course participants when they meet the bears and learn their 
Woodchuckpersonalities, vocalizations, body language, and more. I look forward to questions and answers around the dinner table as the bears raise questions in their minds. I always enjoy the pontoon ride to see wildlife on the way to the den where Lily gave birth to Hope in 2010. During the times of day when bears are fewest, participants choose the presentations they want to see about how to read a bear by knowing the meanings of their vocalizations and body language, how to read bear sign so participants can see if bears live in their home areas, and the presentations that generate the most questions on their biology and danger (or lack of it).
One reason I mentioned the Field Courses here at this time is that we’ve had some cancellations that can be filled. We have openings for a male in the course of July 4-7, a group of up to 5 people in the course of July 11-14, a female in the course of July 18-21, a female in the course of August 1-4, and a male in the course of August 22-25. For more information, e-mail Judy Thon at
Thank you for all you do,
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center