Hope has been off foraging
June 16, 2010 – 11:22 PM CDT
Hope showed up on the trail camera for the first time today about 1 PM and then returned to the feeding station about 8 PM while we were there waiting for her. We had picked a few wild strawberries for her on the walk in to the feeding station. She seemed to recognize the berries and quickly polished them off. She then tried a nice black cherry but dropped it when she saw the pecans. But she dropped a pecan when she saw the mealworms and cleaned those all up before touching anything else. She gave a couple licks to blueberry pie filling (brought as a test) and then concentrated on the nuts for a long time. When she lost interest in the nuts, she checked her empty formula bowl. We filled it. Twice. She didn’t quite finish the second bowl. She produced a dropping that contained a few mealworms and grape skins (both eaten around 1 PM) as well as ants, ant pupae, and crayfish parts.
The collared research bears are mostly foraging in the older clear-cuts where the stumps and downed logs provide abundant ant pupae. June is a couple miles southeast of Hope and Lily was a mile southeast of Hope when her GPS quit working. We don’t know where she’s at the moment and will have to give her a new GPS tomorrow. We hope she’s fairly accessible.
Thank you for your wonderful donations and other help.
We also thank John Rogers (no relation) of Katmai Coastal Tours. John volunteered to give $10,000 to the Bear Center, which is essentially his profit, from his brown bear viewing trip of August 16-21, if 8 people sign up for the trip. The price per person is the usual $5,450 for that length trip. Six people have signed up. Two spaces remain. The main guide for the trip is Brad Josephs, one of the top guides in the business. Brad is thoroughly squared away about bear behavior. He leads a safe trip. On the last day or so, John Mitchell flies in as the guide to add another dimension. He is a plant expert as well as a bear expert. The trip is well within the salmon season, so you will be in the water wearing hip waders with huge bears safely chasing down salmon with hardly a glance toward you. It is the experience of a lifetime. People won’t believe your photos. This is where many TV programs about these bears are made. Everyone who has ever gone on one of these trips with me has gone home a missionary for these gentle giants whose reputations have been so distorted by hunting magazines, taxidermy, and excessive warnings. I have never felt the least bit uncomfortable among them. Brad knows these bears and gives a great, safe experience. For details, check www.katmaibears.com and call John at 1-800-532-8338. The food is great. You live on a big boat in calm waters, traveling from one experience to the next. The scenery is spectacular along the coast of Katmai National Park.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center