We don’t know if Jo is committed to the den we first found her at yesterday or not. The den is tight—long and narrow. We don’t see how she can curl up in it. She might not be ready to commit. She and Victoria spent last night bedded outside the den but did spend some time in it this morning. Here’s the confusing picture—videoed with time codes but summarized here.
In early afternoon, Jo and Victoria lounged around the den. Victoria started raking. Jo joined in. Bracken fern was their preferred bedding choice, and they bypassed other potential bedding to reach the dried ferns. Jo also bit and pulled up a clump of dried grass to add to her pile. Victoria carefully added a 2-ft long goldenrod stem to the mix.
Then their attention turned to scent-marking. They went 100 yards to a power corridor where Jo front-rubbed a pole, letting us see how that action turns Jo’s collar 180 degrees upside down. When a bear front-rubs a pole or tree they stand on their hind legs facing the pole and rub their chest and neck on the pole—swinging their head from side to side and even tipping it down to rub the very top of their head. Collars take a beating during this type of marking. Jo immediately front-rubbed again and the collar turned back (phew!) and then back-rubbed the pole. She stomp-walked away from the pole (a form of scent-marking) and back to it to back-rub again. She repeated the stomp-rub sequence a third time before bolting off the power corridor with Victoria scrambling to catch up.
Their next stop was a den we didn’t know about 150 yards away from the den of yesterday and today. As they got close, Victoria ran ahead and crawled in. She obviously was familiar with the den. Jo followed. No raking there, though. After inspecting the den they moved on and we shortly left them.
Back at the research cabin, we followed their GPS locations on the computer. They had continued another 200 yards to a third den—one that another bear showed us four years ago.
At this moment, they’re bedded about 320 yards from the den of the last couple days. We have no idea what they will do next.
Again, Jo was a sweetheart—comfortable, trusting, calm—as if we weren’t there. Jo is named after the wife of BBC Producer Ted Oakes, but could appropriately be thought of as short for Joy, which she is—as is Ted’s wife. We think of Jo as a Joy—a joy that we can’t figure out. Tomorrow she will show us another chapter as we watch on the computer.
In late afternoon, we checked on 2-year-old Star, the great-great-granddaughter of Shadow (Shadow, Blackheart, Donna, Shannon, Star—fifth generation). She dug a den in a gravelly bank by the roots of a fallen tree that apparently toppled over the bank. We stayed back 10 yards and snapped a quick picture. Star is doing more what a person would expect—denning like the other bears, raking in bedding, and settling down.
It was a beautiful day for flying to listen for Colleen’s telemetry signal again. The high ceiling let us fly at 5,000 feet for wide coverage. We clearly heard signals from over 13 miles away on either side of the airplane (an antenna on each side). We flew for 1.9 hours and covered every area within the realm of possibility. We concentrated in her territory—especially the area where she had been September 12 to October 12. We flew a radius around the territory. Then we flew a larger radius of 12-18 miles, covering a radius of 25-30 miles. Nothing. We’re digesting that and wondering what to do next.
A video of Jo scent-marking and checking out dens on Oct 25 has been posted at http://www.youtube.com/user/bearstudy#p/u/0/O-tXnr9lkyw. Watch as she stomp-walks, straddles saplings, digs out root mounds, begins and abandons dens, etc.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center