With registration for the bear courses ending its second day, the courses are already nearly 60 percent full, making me look forward to meeting newcomers and getting to know previous participants even better. https://www.bearstudy.org/field-study-courses/reserve-your-spot.html
Every year is different, depending on the bears, time of year, topics people bring up around the table, and the slide/video lectures they request. The best learning is from the bears themselves as the bears interact with each other, vocalize their emotions, and calmly interact with the participants, showing how different they are from what most people believe. With all the participants see first-hand, they go home knowing more about black bear behavior than do most biologists. As they experience bears close-up they reflect on what they saw and often say how life-changing the experience is or was. Interactions with trusting wild bears leave lasting impressions and often make certain bears favorites that compel people to come back again and again to learn more and more about what they hadn't expected. Seeing bears change people's hearts like they for me, is one of the reasons I look forward to these gatherings each year and makes me want to understand bears' minds better and better. https://www.bearstudy.org/field-study-courses/about-the-courses.html
Hiking on a bear course
I feel a bit of that desire to also learn the ways of other animals that let me see them close enough to see their reactions and abilities. The eyes of deer that become expectant when they see me, seagulls that leap to catch food I toss to them, the long wings that dwarf the bodies of eagles when they leap into flight, and close-up views of blue jays eagerly stuffing their crops with food-each with its own plan for caching that food in its own place-sightings that make me thankful for what happens just outside my desk window here.
Bear at WRI
But bears are number one after all these years, making the black bear field courses a time of being thankful for people who share hearts for wildlife and want to learn what bears are like directly from the bears themselves.
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Thank you for all you do,
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center