Three bears and a bobcat

Brian checked the cams at Wind River Ranch and emailed a few jpgs.

Good dens are like prime real estate. Several den shoppers examined the burrow under the rimrock.

The bobcat sniffed at the entrance. If it entered the camera missed it.

Bear biologist Tom Beck saw this den last year and thought it was the work of a bear. The pictures seem to support the idea.



Mama bear came with two cubs, and plunged right in to start renovations. It looks to me like she’s digging, but the kids haven’t learned to pitch in.



The pale cub is a pastel color phase that is not particularly common. At this latitude cinnamon colored bears are seen more often.

These cubs are small enough to have been born this year. They may still be suckling, but are taking as much solid food as possible.

We can expect the three bears to den together. Black bears breed every other year when times are good. Lactation inhibits estrus in the summer following birth. That means mama is into motherhood, and doesn’t put up with amorous males.

It isn’t till the second year that the family breaks up. When mama seeks carnal liaisons with strangers the youngsters get a rude awakening.

The problem for these little guys is the mast failure. There was nary an acorn to be seen when I was schlepping around the rimrock, but there were plenty of rosehips. Under these conditions the little guys might make it through the winter but could starve in the spring.

It boils down to the ability to put on fat. A trim bear can survive the winter because in dormancy the metabolism gears down to a low idle. But survival is iffy come spring, especially when it comes late. Fat bears still have energy to burn; skinny bears don't. 

So let us leave our bears for now, and hope all works well. The camera will be waiting for their next appearance.





References

Bridges, A. S., J. A. Fox, C. Olfenbuttel, and J. R. Vaughan. 2004. American black bear denning behavior: observations and applications using remote photography. Wildlife Society Bulletin, 32(1):188-193

 

Doan-Crider, D. and E.C. Hellgren. 1996. Population characteristics and winter ecology of black bears in Coahuila, Mexicp. Journal of Wildlife Management, 60(2):398-407

Rogers, L.L. 1987. Effects of food supply and kinship on social behavior, movements, and population growth of black bears in northeastern Minnesota. Wildlife Monographs No. 97, 72 pp.

No cannibal jokes today, please

Today someone sent me a joke about cannibalism. The timing wasn't good.

I just finished Ordeal by Hunger, the late George Stewart’s gripping account of the Donner party. The year was 1846, and the tragedy was one of the most spectacular of frontier history.

Murder, abandonment, old age, and disease had already accounted for 5 deaths when the party reached Truckee (now Donner) Lake at the end of October. There, just east of the pass a snowstorm trapped the remaining party of 84. One remarkable member though made it to the Sacramento Valley and brought the news to the local community and beyond, where a heroic rescue was organized.

The rescuers were dogged by horrific storms and 12-foot snow drifts, and the snow-bound emigrants ran out of food.  It was impossible to rescue everyone at the same time. Some families didn't want to be separated; others were too weak to travel.

So the rescue had to be staged as weather allowed, emigrants started to die of starvation, and the ordeal by hunger led to the inevitable. 

Before I could finish the book I was searching Google maps to find the three cabin sites, and trying to figure out the rescue route to the Sacramento Valley. 

And I found that there’s still a great deal of interest in the story, not to mention several dedicated websites, here and here, and a blog by a librarian's librarian. (There's a lot more than this, so check the links if you are interested.)

Recent archeological work has also unearthed a few denialists. That cannibalism took place is undeniable, even among the Donner's themselves.

I can understand the sense of stigma such a family's descendants might feel, but Stewart’s words took me beyond that.

“For though despair is often close at hand, it never triumphs, and through all the story runs, a sustaining bond, the primal force which humanity shares with all earthly creatures, the sheer will to live.”

At least the lizard likes it

It's a stone wall made of local rocks. We built it ourselves last Sunday, trying to find rocks that fit together. They don't make rocks like that around here. So it's nothing to brag about.

But the lizard was there the next day, and I am happy to say it finds our sorry looking wall quite acceptable.

If anyone asks what it is, we're telling them it's an LHRP -- lizard habitat restoration project.

Return to the rimrock

The caves and recesses in the rimrock were too intriguing. I decided to leave three cameras at Wind River Ranch, and Brian assured me he would check them, change batteries, or pull them, as desired.

I made a hurried hike to the bluffs with Luna the day before we left.

I left one camera at a large burrow dug at the foot of a bluff. This wasn’t a gopher burrow. It was big enough for a small bear or a coyote.



I left another at the fissure cave that Luna refused to enter.



And the third camera I left at a long overhang where I imagined ringtails playing in the moonlight.

Whatever pokes its nose in there, settles done for a long winter's sleep, or eats the camera -- you'll hear about it.

Well turned legs

A picture of a pair of well turned legs was not my goal.

Experience has taught me that when time is limited your chances are slim of getting camera trap photos of most large mammals, and especially predators.

So I set one cam on the prairie, hoping for kangaroos rats and pocket mice, which visit bare dirt to luxuriate in a nightly dust bath and dine on wind-blown seeds.

I laced the soil with sunflower seeds, and thought it was a done deal.



Instead of rodents I got elk.



Sometimes you're predictions come true, and sometimes you get a surprise. Either way, the results are usually welcome.

Rimrock rambles

I have a powerful attraction to rimrock. For recreational land-based exploration it's the best.

That’s why the Millers’ dog Luna and I rambled the rimrock for the better part of two days.

The bluffs hold many secrets, and the alluvium guards the bluffs. So you don’t get there without a workout.

Of course that doesn't apply to dogs. Luna raced up the hill effortlessly, zipped here and there through the thickets, then raced back to me, as if to ask what’s taking so long?

I trudged around the boulders, and squeezed through the scrub oak which had an annoying way of whipping off my hat and snatching at my glasses.

“You little #@*& . . . (puff puff) . . . you thought you were going to put out my eye, but not this time . . . ”. (Yes, I attribute motives to vegetation and curse it. It's a good coping mechanism.) 

The rock wall was my reward. There was grass, and thin trails skirted it here and there.



I dropped my pack, felt cool air on my wet back, and took a long draft of water. The pant-smiling Luna watched me for a few moments and then took off again.

Then I explored and realized that the rimrock feeds the soil at its feet. Pellet middens of woodrats may mummify, but a lot of it washes out of the fissures. The same must hold true for bat guano in caves and cracks. All these little guys eat a lot of roughage, you know, and are highly regular.



Cliff swallows make their own contributions, and then there are the bones -- rodent skulls and rabbit bones dropped from raptor eyries above and washed into rows of storm flotsam. (The better specimens now decorate the fireplace mantle in Brian's office).



There were the overhangs with smoked ceilings and charcoal.



Most intriguing though were the slab caves, fissure caves, and recesses. Was Luna's caution due to some lingering bearish scent?



As I GPS'd one of the sites, I remembered the amusing tale of some South Indian colleagues who tracked a radio-collared leopard to a similar bluff cave in Mudamalai National Park. They were peering into the dark hole when the cat exploded from the opening like a snarling cannon ball.

It was getting late when Luna refused to heed my call. Then there she was above me, telling me there was another way back. I followed her up to the plateau through a deceptive cut in the rimrock, and we made our way to Falcon Canyon's bluffs. We climbed down the side canyon and followed it to the Mora River and home.

There's something to be said for canine company.

A comely bobcat

A comely bobcat paused to look at the camera and then was gone. From Rich's recent dispatch from the Cleary Reserve cams.