Holly exploring - May 31Does Holly have a thing for Lucky? Her explorations today focused on his day beds back in the woods. Both Ted and Honey were out while Holly was, but she didn’t come close to either of them. She seemed interested only in Lucky’s area. Soon, she may find him there when we choose to let them out together.
A second video of Holly from May 30 is posted at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c_jhghdCr-4.
Yearling with ticksBraveheart’s male yearling put in another appearance at the WRI. Between the ticks on his eyelids and the mosquitoes, he looked pretty sad. This is the yearling we showed with ticks on his eye on May 29 (http://tinyurl.com/kb9mrpw). The ticks are bigger now, and so is he—17.5 pounds heavier—so he’s doing okay. We’ve never seen so many ticks on a bear’s eyelids before. He’ll be glad when they fall off.
We haven’t seen any activity at the pileated woodpecker’s nest cavity for several days now and wonder if we’re just missing it or if they gave up on this nest. We know that no mammal preyed on them because we put a sheet of metal around the trunk to prevent any more incursions by the fisher of a couple years ago. We saw the fisher here 2-3 weeks ago. We also hadn’t seen any activity at the hooded merganser nest box since we mentioned it May 24 (http://tinyurl.com/klolxcx). But today, there was another fly-by as the male again escorted the female to the nest.
Thank you for all you do.
—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
All photos taken today unless otherwise noted.