Sybil and Sophie - Aug 13, 2012The group and we struck it rich today with visits to Jewel, Juliet, June, Braveheart, and Sharon. Reaching Jewel, Herbie, and Fern turned out to be a long walk through a cedar swamp that took most of the morning and a couple hours of the afternoon.
June sleeping in mossy bed - Aug 13, 2012Bear action speeded up later in the afternoon. Juliet and her cubs Sam, Sophie, and Sybil were only a couple hundred yards off a forest road. The cubs are growing, looking more like older bears, and getting new coats of winter fur. Sophie and Sybil posed to show how absolutely cute they are.
June - Aug 13, 2012June was also a short walk up a steep hill, down a steep hill, and into a cedar swamp. She had found about as cushy a bed of moss as exists in the northwoods. Her reaction to “It’s me bear” was to put her head down on the soft moss and close her eyes.
GPS locations for Braveheart showed she would be easy enough to reach before supper. We went for it. She was her usual calm self and showed a heart rate of 62/minute that had many skipped beats—surprising for this time of year. Skipped beats is usually associated with pre-hibernation slowdown.
Sharon - Aug 13, 2012
Bill - Aug 13, 2012Sharon proved to be the most interesting. Today she was with Bill, her buddy from her June feeding on tent caterpillars. Could she have mated with him? Does she still like him this long after mating season? We’ve been surprised at the tender interactions between mates months after mating season—far different from the usual descriptions of males that love ‘em and leave ‘em in the bear world. We look forward to seeing if Sharon has cubs this winter and if they have the light noses of Bill.
The pair also showed us that bears are into hornet nests now. Our attempt to walk with them to observe their behavior was cut short by hornets buzzing around a freshly dug hornet nest.
Hornet entering dug out nest - Aug 13, 2012We ended up late for supper (8 PM) but managed to change GPS batteries for all 5 bears to keep the stream of GPS locations flowing to our computers.
Tomorrow we have another meeting about the new Hope Education Building. Keep your ideas coming. No matter if you suggest things we are already doing—it just shows that we are doing some things right.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center