Bear sign

Sneaky bear ... what were you after? And was it really necessary to leave a huge pile of your ... ahem ... leftovers on our lawn?

We have our birdfeeders so well protected that the bears haven't been able to reach them, which is good for our feeders but really limits our bear sightings for the most part. They're still coming through the yard, to be sure, but they're so silent about it most of the time, we don't ever know it. This planter was knocked over in the middle of the night, though, so we heard him. But didn't see him. Too sleepy to hop to the window for a peek.

The Huz walked up our driveway the other day and decided to detour into the front yard to check the veggie garden and spotted a big bear streaking away into the woods, spooked. I'd been upstairs working the whole time and never knew he was out there.

I miss seeing them, but really this is the way it's supposed to be. No bird feeder depradation, no bear interactions ... it's what's best for them and for us. I guess I'll be a grownup about it. Sigh.

Pictures of local black bears in our yard in previous years

BIG bear

Our little bear has a friend. Or competition.

In 15 years of living here, this is the Biggest. Bear. We've. Ever. Seen. You know how when you look at a picture of a gorilla, the thing that makes him look soooo strong is his shoulders? Well, this bruiser has shoulders like that. He is HUGE! Male black bears can get to be as big as 500 pounds. This guy has to be in that neighborhood.

And, for contrast, female black bears run between 90 and 400 pounds. "Our little bear" is definitely down closer to 90 pounds. She's so small that at first we thought she was a yearling. But it's the third year seeing her, and she's still tiny. For a bear. She'd make a darn good-sized dog, though!

You can read a little more about our little bear here if you're curious. Follow the links backward from that article to get the full history with her.

Some of you left comments about being afraid of our little bear, and I totally understand that. But having lived in the woods and among bears for some 15 years now, and having interacted with this bear from a distance for a few years, I know that she, like most bears, wants to avoid us as much as we want to avoid them. Each bear is different, and if you observe them for a while you begin to figure out their temperament somewhat. So I respect our little bear for what she would be capable of if cornered, but I know that as long as I exercise some common sense we'll never get into the situation where she would hurt me.

I'm not so sure about this guy.

He's way too comfortable around people. He came up onto our deck at night, as you can see, to empty our can of bird seeds (foolish me for leaving it outside; never again!). Then, once he was done, he came over to the back door, where the Huz was standing and I was kneeling trying every setting on my camera to get a decent shot of him. He wasn't interested in us; he was sniffing around for more bear chow. (Can you imagine how much he has to eat, to power a body that size?) At one point, I was lying on my stomach shooting through the bottom window as he was literally sniffing the window. The flash went off right in his eyes. He just paused for one second and continued his food hunt.

The picture didn't turn out. He was too close.

I'm going to be verrry cautious for a while, knowing that this bear is in the neighborhood. Fortunately, he seems to be a nighttime bear. He's been back three nights in a row, always pretty late. We may never see him during the day, but I'll be cautious before stepping out the back door this summer.

an upper valley ursine visitor (UVUV!)

The little bear who visited us last year is back. Here you can see her just outside my kitchen window. She's licking the fallen sunflower seeds off the ground, since she can't reach the feeders.

You can see lots more pictures of her here. (If you click that link, be patient; it goes to my October archive, which has a lot of posts.)

It looks as if she did very well through the winter. Look at that gorgeous coat!


Ambling away.

Little bear has been an honorary dog at Sweetnicks' Weekend Dog Blogging before, so this is my entry for this week. This Sunday, head on over to Sweetnicks' place for a peek at more, shall we say, traditional dog shots!

eat & run, ursine version

First of all, I apologize to those of you who connect via a modem. This post is going to take a while to download. I whittled the list of pictures down to 12, from dozens and dozens that I shot, and I just couldn't bring myself to eliminate one more!

About a year & a half ago, I wrote about a little bear who came to visit in the middle of the night and then again the next day, when I could get a picture of her. Check the post to see the picture. It was shot through a window with a screen on it on a cloudy day, so it's not very clear but she's very cute nonetheless. Read the story to see why I think it's a she.

On 9/25 this year, we had a visit from a bear, larger than that one but still small. It's impossible to tell for sure, of course, but I think this might be the same little girl. This time she was big enough to reach the long hanging feeders, so she was able to whip them off the line hard enough to make all the feeders clang to the ground. Then she settled down and proceeded to spend about 45 minutes cleaning up her mess. Well, at least she cleaned up the seeds. She forgot to hang the feeders back up when she left.

So here are a few pictures of my little bear. Enjoy!

How many feeders do you count on the ground?

In the picture below, I swear she's smiling.
When I called to her to try to get her to look my way, her ears went up and her head swung around, but she was in no way frightened. Just checking it out to see if she needed to be concerned about me.
Don't you love the way her lips are all bunched up here? She was still chewing as she checked me out.
You might think that she was being threatening in these next two pics, but nothing could be farther from the truth. She was yawning.
I changed the setting on my camera to "cloudy" here, which made a big difference on the colors, but I'm not sure it's really an improvement.
I watched her for about 15 minutes. When it became clear she was just going to take up residence for a while until she finished all those seeds, I left her in peace. About 45 minutes later, I came back to check on her, and was startled to find her wandering around on the back deck. In fact, she was right next to the windows! I ran for the camera and barely took this shot before Simba got wind of what was going on and put his nose right next to hers, barking madly.
She decided the risk outweighed the benefit of sticking around, not knowing when the crazy dog might jump right through the glass to get to her, so she hightailed it out of there. I was a little bummed; I hadn't gotten a very good closeup of her. My next shot was going to be with me on my knees to get a really good head shot. Oh well.Two weeks later, she hasn't been back. Either she has a really large range that she's working (and, after all, she ate all the seeds so in a bear's mind maybe there's no good reason to come back), or my fierce little 11-pound guard dog has made this stop on her route fall way to the bottom of her list. It's also possible she didn't mark anything with her scent, so she can't find her way back without some luck in the formula.

In any case, it was a delight to have her here. I agree with folks who say it's not good to entice bears into your yard by feeding them, because it's not good for them to get too comfortable around people. They become pests. And people find ways to deal with pests that often result in the bear's demise. So I'll do my best not to entice. But when a bear is as well-behaved as this little lady, I'll also do my best to enjoy her visits, if she chooses to return!