Red foxIt is nice to again be seeing the fox enjoy his mini-muffin treats. He eats other foods, too, and carries a lot of them far off to cache for another day, but muffins are the only thing that makes him tilt his nose up, close his eyes, and get lost in the enjoyment of chewing.
Red fox chewing muffinA new visitor is a second Fisher much smaller than the male. I emailed three pictures to Roger Powell to see if it is a female, a young Fisher, or both. We’ll see what he says. I wondered what the new Fisher thought about muffins, she (I’m guessing) sniffed each one but only took the meat. To each its own.
Three deer looking tensely into the distance made me look in their line of sight. Sixty yards (according to Google Earth) upwind a coyote was watching motionless from behind a bush. The deer hurried off. I wondered if the coyote would spring into action or just let them go. He turned and walked away into the woods. The picture shows the dark spot on the top of its tail that marks the scent gland that might have helped the deer know he was nearby.
 Coyote walking away |
 Fisher |
As I see the Black Bear Field Courses fill up (23 spaces to go), I look forward to the good feeling of kindred spirits learning along with me as we experience bears and more. The people who work with me feel the same. It always makes me feel good to hear them talking to the bears, addressing them as ‘my friend.’ This area has some of the oldest bears in Minnesota because it is a nature-loving area that gives bears long lives. When I feel most thankful for that in this area is in years of berry crop failures when bears elsewhere are desperate for food and are being killed as nuisances going house to house looking for tidbits of garbage and bird food while bears here are welcomed with substantial food at a dozen diversionary feeding sites and stay out of trouble. Such feeding has gone on here now for over 60 years and is one of the main reasons that Shadow is the second oldest black bear on record at 35 and that cub survival in years of wild food shortages remains high. They still prefer the variety of wild foods, which is why fewer bears visit the diversionary feeding sites in years of wild abundance.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
Edited 1-19-24 to correct the identification of the coyote, previously believed to be a wolf