The GPSed bears moved little today. Is it because hibernation is approaching? Or is it there too little food in the woods to make travel worthwhile?
We remember back in 1990 when a tent caterpillar outbreak in May and June drastically reduced the berry crop of July and August. Terri, the bear we were following that year, discovered a hunter’s bait pile and made that her focus the last two weeks of August, resting a lot in between feeding there.
Or might the wind of the last couple days be a factor. Wind makes the woods sound like danger (rustling) in all directions. On windy days, some bears spend the day staying safe high in trees.
Or perhaps they are resting up before moving to a den. Time will tell.
Jo and her cub are pictured above. A video of Lily nursing both Hope and Faith on September 9 will be posted later tonight at http://www.youtube.com/user/bearstudy#g/u.
At this moment 4:49 PM, rain hit—big wind, but only brief rain—and the wind is suddenly out of the northeast with a temperature of only 55 degrees and dropping. Yesterday the wind was out of the west and northwest with a temperature of 82. Under those conditions, the Pagami Creek forest fire east of Ely made a fast run of 16 miles to the east and grew from 7 square miles a couple days ago to 94 square miles yesterday, according to the latest reports. This is a big fire.
How far away can a person smell smoke? Yesterday, a sheriff in northeastern Wisconsin eased people’s minds by letting them know the smoke was from the fire near Ely,MN, 265 miles away. It was the same story in Eckerman, Michigan, 309 miles southeast of the fire.
If people that far away can smell smoke enough to worry about it, how far could a bear smell it? How far could a bear smell food? This does add credibility to speculation that bears used smell to converge on a big hazelnut patch over 40 miles upwind some years back. One of the bears we radio-tracked there had never been there before because we had radio-tracked her nearly all of her life.
We appreciated the good comments at the end of T. R.’s blog at http://www.startribune.com/sports/outdoors/blogs/129672558.html last night.
Thank you for the tons of Subway sandwiches today, along with enough chips for an army—or at least enough for us and the staff at the Bear Center. Thank you so much!
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center