Hunting season ended yesterday although we haven’t seen any bear hunting action around here for about a month now. The little bit of bear activity here this time of year is mostly at night, which would be after shooting hours.
The big bear action today was Tasha at the Bear Center vigorously raking leaves into her rock den—leaves that Sharon, her keeper, put there for her. https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=5585778924838954 We’ll see if Tasha can hang on to this den this year without dominant Holly usurping it. Bears will be bears.
Red fox
After not seeing a fox here for a long time, the red fox that came a couple days ago was an entertainer yesterday. He or she was constantly on the hunt, looking for a red squirrel or maybe a mouse to eat instead of our plebeian fare. The picture of it facing away with its tail straight out was just after it tried to pounce on a red squirrel that narrowly escaped into the brush pile in the picture. Sitting on the log, the fox was scanning around, probably looking for a catchable, warm body. But foxes I seen here have mostly been unsuccessful. It probably takes many tries to find the right circumstance—just like researchers have reported for wolves and other predators in the wild. Eventually, this fox settles for a piece of bologna from a hand or eggs from the front deck. The picture shows the fox trying unsuccessfully to take two at once. Like other foxes we’ve watched, it carries nice prizes like that off in various directions to stash for lean times and quickly returns for more.
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It’s not our fox, though. In this nature-loving community, other people feed foxes, too. This one mostly lives a half mile away where a couple cooks boneless chicken that is hard to match, hence we will probably see the fox only while they are off to another state.
Mallards
I didn’t see the fox today, and maybe that is why I saw something I haven’t seen before—a stream of mallards, 94 individuals long, walking mostly single file up their narrow trail from the lake to the yard where they spread out to feed in the weeds. I’ve never seen anything close to that many ducks here before. Flocks of mallards that are migrating through probably joined our locals in their endeavors. When something scared the big flock, nearly all took off in a loud flurry of wings while a few continued to forage as if nothing happened. I suspect the few stalwarts were locals used to seeing a person in a window or whatever.
Always a good day here one way or another.
Thank you for all you do,
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center