It’s looking like Quill is done eating. No visit for two nights in a row. His last weight was 63 pounds, nearly double the 32 pounds he weighed on October 21, which was undoubtedly
Pileated woodpecker higher than when he began coming on October 13. I’d say the team more than doubled his weight. I remember being happy when he made it to 40 pounds and wondering if 50 pounds would be possible.
An encouraging bit of information is that in my earlier work, I put radio-collars on nine orphans to determine overwinter survival. All nine made dens and survived to spring. You can read more in the article Rogers, L. L. 1985. Aiding the wild survival of orphaned bear cubs. Wildlife Rehabilitation 4:104-111. Click on the highlighted title to see the whole article. It says that survival after July is determined more by food supply than by the presence of the mother. The team took care of food supply for little Quill. I’m optimistic.
Woods LakeLast night the wind became dead calm, letting Woods Lake be mirror calm as the temperature dropped to at least 15°F. By this morning, it was frozen over as is shown in Peggy’s picture.
Out the window, the female pileated woodpecker is back. Off to the side, a red squirrel caught my eye as it inched up a tree to actually sniff a big brown hawk that was sitting perfectly still. Then it flew before I could grab my camera and look for identification marks. The brief look made me guess female goshawk.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center