This past Sunday, a Lily Fan captured this nearly 5-minute video of Tasha’s relationships with Ted and Holly. 
Yearling in pineTasha came within 20 feet of Ted and didn’t run from him. Interacting through a fence, Tasha and Holly look playful. I’ve heard that Lucky doesn’t act that friendly to Tasha through a fence, so we separate her from him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SdRGrA5f1I.
Gray fox with bolognaAlso on Sunday, out in the woods, June’s old mate Big Harry was seen following June’s granddaughter Fern. Glad to hear Big Harry is around and contributing his good genes to June’s family line. Fern was seen chasing her yearlings about a week ago on Monday, and the film team caught this aspect of family breakup. It was a learning experience for us because we’d had reports of Fern alone and with her cubs showing that family breakup is not always an instantaneous thing—as we also saw with Samantha and her four yearlings.
Shadow and mateShadow has a boyfriend, and they are sweet together. The pair was spotted about 8 o’clock last evening. They turned out to be night owls, appearing about 11 PM here where another night owl, Peggy, snapped a picture out the window (Shadow is in the foreground hiding her gray face from the camera). Peggy said they shared a platter of peanuts nose to nose, sometimes nibbling gently at each other. To me, seeing a male so attracted to her is doubly interesting because no one knows why female black bears stop reproducing after 26 (after age 28 in Shadow’s case). The male’s interest suggests Shadow is in estrus, which might mean that Shadow just needed an extra year to recover from her last litter and is about to set a new record of a female black bear producing a litter at age 31. We’ll be looking to see if she has a litter next spring.
Woodchuck eating grassBig drama in the woodchuck family. The mother is chasing her five babies, and the adult male is chasing her. From what I’ve read, woodchucks don’t have second litters around here, so it’s a mystery why he is chasing her. From the literature, the reason the mother is chasing the babies is likely that she is weaning them. The photos show the mother eating grass and then beginning a chase.
Fun at the Wildlife Research Institute started about 2 AM, Peggy said. The pair of gray foxes and their pups were active around the front deck, carrying pups and looking like they were having a good time.
Woodchuck starting chaseA yearling spent this morning sleeping high in a white pine out the window as you can see in Peggy’s picture from shortly before noon while I was at a meeting in town.
This evening, I threw a slice of bologna toward a gull that was supposed to catch it, but its neck was only so long. I wondered why the gull didn’t immediately fly down and get it from the ground. Then I saw the slice in a gray fox’s mouth just before the fox disappeared under the front deck. I looked under the deck. Nothing. A half hour later, a fox emerged from under the deck the same place where the pups go in and out. There might be more going on under the deck than we realize. It’s the deck where Black Bear Field Course participants sit, giving us more eyes to solve this mystery.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center