Checking on bears
Update March 14, 2010 - 8:28 PM CDT
First, we want to say what a pleasure it is to read all your comments and to write these updates. We feel like we’re talking to friends, and we can’t wait to meet everyone who cares enough about Lily and their fellow Lily-holics to come to the Lilypad Picnic July 30-August 1. We hope your name tags have your Facebook names so we can put faces with the words.
Today, we visited 7-year-old Juliet in nearly 60 degree shirtsleeve weather and found her nursing 3 big cubs. The sound of the cubs actually led us to the den! Juliet was very alert—like we’ve been seeing with Lily—and so unlike what we saw yesterday in 10-year-old Donna with no cubs. You’ll see Juliet big-time in ‘Bearwalker of the Northwoods’, especially in the UK version available in the NABC Gift Shop.
Amazing weather. We can’t remember anything like it. The newspaper says temperatures have been running 15-30 degrees above normal for most of March. This will test some hypotheses.
Next, we listened for activity on 9-year-old June’s frequency. Her signal was still strong in the direction of her den, but this time there was no activity. She likely was resting in or near her den.
Back at the field station we checked the Facebook comments and saw that Lily had been very active. We could see she had pulled a branch across the lens—casting the den into darkness. We needed to clear the lens for all the ‘den-watchers’ who so diligently collect data for us, so we paid Lily a visit. She came out calm about us but very alert and defensive toward any movement of the camera or of branches in the direction the dog had visited her.
We stroked her firmly down the back as familiar reassurance. She’s lost a lot of weight, as is normal. We felt her lean body under the 3-4 inches of dense fur, checked her very loose radio-collar, and took her heart rate (138/min). She was shaking a bit, which probably meant she was pumping extra blood into her arms and legs (see Evidence that black bears reduce peripheral blood flow during hibernation. Bears in dens also have several temperature spikes per day which are thought to accompany shivering and isometric tensing of the muscles to maintain strength (see UW Researchers Verify Strength of Hibernating Bears. Sometime in the last few days she dragged a couple dead saplings to the entrance of her den. We still didn’t find any feces.
We’re thinking of making another piece of Lily and Hope memorabilia—a DVD of Lily from a little cub in a den to an adult making a den last fall, plus a collection of clips from the footage Linda Gibson has saved. We can’t take credit for the idea, though, because it came from Don-Minn-Jay. We’re a little cautious, though, because after your wonderful buying spree on the t-shirts we ordered way too many mugs and mouse pads, and DVD pre-orders are running lower than we thought. We know there is less than a month of den cam watching left and are looking for a way to gauge interest in the Lily DVD.
Thank you again for your many contributions and good comments.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center