Although Shadow’s 19-year-old granddaughter Bow (Shadow, RC, Bow) didn’t personally stop by with her bow-shaped chest blaze; her firstborn son Ty did, now 16 years old, with his calm personality even though his beat-up face showed he’d had a rough mating season.
16 year old Ty
Also joining us for the reunion was Ty’s 14-year-old sister Daisy and her three cubs that we’d seen well enough a few days earlier to identify the one shown to be a male. The other two included a brown one that made us wonder if Rusty the Rover is part of this family.
First sighting
The biggest surprise of the reunion was Daisy’s 6-year-old daughter Snowflake showing up with a single female cub. Having had exclusive access to her mother’s milk, the cub was a bit larger than usual for her age. We think this is Snowflake’s first cub, considering that it is a single, which is often the case with mothers’ first and last litters, and considering that Snowflake is small for her age. Although we don’t see Snowflake in some years, she was as trusting as ever at the reunion.
Donnas 2 cubs
With this special day we learned a bit about Ty’s roamings. Somehow a picture of his distinctive face found its way to the photographer’s uncle who had seen that face 13 miles away—first on his trail cam on June 6 during mating season, and in person in the same area on July 1 at the end of mating season. After that, Ty disappeared from there and made his way back here to his mother’s territory by July 26. In taking nearly 3 weeks to move 13 miles, he probably did what other bears were doing as they moved into hyperphagia—making the many scats we’ve seen filled with juneberry seeds in this year of this berry’s unusual abundance. Juneberries are now passing their peak and other berries are ripening, including chokecherries that are also abundant this year.
Chokecherries
At this moment, more good news arrived. I just got a call that 25-year-old Donna bear was seen with two cubs—the one to the right in the picture being a male and the other as yet unknown.
Thank you for all you do,
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center