Many bald eagles added bits of excitement this past week as they returned and move through this area. The biggest bit of excitement was when an immature swooped close to my window, filling my view with its 6 to 7½-foot wingspan as it tilted vertical to veer off. Memorable, but each sighting was too brief to click. Two days ago, a mature eagle landed in good sun outside the front door. I tried to ease the door open, but its eagle eyes caught sight of me and it was off. I frantically tried to find it in the viewfinder but it was 40 yards away before the camera barely caught it at the edge of a frame skimming along the tops of some red pines a second before it disappeared. I put the card in the computer not expecting much and saw the camera had caught it better than I’d thought.
Lynn w/Donna - 2003Yesterday, Sue Kehoe, the lady who knows the wild bear that politely closes doors, sent me a picture from 20 years ago that recalled a happy memory of 3-year-old Donna Bear when Sue and some of her friends joined me to find Donna and her cubs in the woods on July 5, 2003.
Donna and her sister Dot were born to Blackheart, daughter of Shadow, in 2000 and may be familiar to those who saw the Animal Planet documentary ‘The Man Who Walks With Bears’ filmed by my friend Doug Hajicek. That was back when 3-year-old Blackheart was the first of Shadow’s daughters to begin expanding Shadow’s clan into the hundreds of descendents of today. Twenty-eight of those descendents are from Donna (11 litters), who should be with her 12th litter as we speak. Blackheart and her cubs Dot and Donna were the first family I spent much time with at their den. Black bears have a critical socialization period from 6 to 12 weeks of age when cubs decide who are friends and who are foes. Donna decided I was a friend, so when we joined her on July 5, 2003 when she was three and had her first litter somewhere nearby, she was comfortable and I was happy as is shown in the picture. She is generally shy and reclusive. I don’t know that she has ever been the subject of a bear complaint. Shadow was 35 years old this past year—the second oldest black bear on record. I wish Donna a long life, too.
Thank you Sue for the picture and thank you all for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center