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Ted, Raven, Website, and Research - UPDATE April 3, 2016
03 April 2016
I had no idea that ravens would come this close to a bear. A Lily Fan captured this video of a raven behaving Dark eyed junco
Dark-eyed junco
comfortably only 2-3 feet from Ted?s head as they faced each other.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW73kP6CBHk&feature=youtu.be.
I thought of Bernd Heinrich?s book Mind of the Raven and his words ?In the High Arctic, ravens follow polar bears and feed at their kills, and in Yellowstone Park they also feed not only near coyotes and wolves but also sometimes with brown bear. Doug Peacock in Grizzly Years described watching a large grizzly sow and her cub...with ravens all around. At times, she reared and swatted at the cloud of ravens, flailing away at the air with her paws. The ravens probably also wanted what the bear was searching for, most likely pocket gophers or their seed caches.?
Lily and her yearlings
Lily and her yearlings - March 21, 2016
I emailed Bernd at the University of Vermont: ?Bernd, I thought of your book and ravens and wolves when I saw our captive bear interacting so close with this raven. In Ely, ravens get used to people, but nothing like this. They were only 2-3 feet apart at times. I suspect the raven has been coming to Ted?s pen awhile and became habituated to him, but they don?t habituate to that extent with the people of Ely, even those that feed ravens. If bears are scavengers that open carcasses for ravens, maybe ravens are prone to habituate to bears more easily than they do to people. Do they get that close to wolves? Lynn?
Eric the webmaster has been working long hours the last couple days and has bearstudy.org upgraded. I?m sure there are glitches to fix yet, but this is a major upgrade with new advantages. The update tonight will go out to the subscriber list that has been having major trouble, so we?ll see how that goes.
Lily and her yearling - March 21, 2016
Lily and her yearling - March 21, 2016
In going through old papers, I came across this 9-page document I wrote to Commissioner Landwehr back in December 2011. It?s full of information about what we do, how the study bears respond, how reviewers ranked the safety of what we do in 1990 and 2008, and how bears respond to Black Bear Field Study groups
http://www.bearstudy.org/website/images/ stories/images/Updates_2016/ Response_to_Proposed_2012_Permit_Conditions.pdf.
Speaking of the Field Courses, with the good words I?ve been hearing from key legislators, I?m looking forward to some of the best Field Courses we?ve had. Thirteen slots are left in four courses at
http://www.bearstudy.org/website/field-study-courses.html. If those 4 courses fill up, or nearly so, we?ll open another to run from July 31-August 3.
Thinking of Lily, we looked at the trail cam pictures and found that since the card in the trail cam was changed on January 4, no bear had come out until March 15 despite the warm El Nino winter. They were out for a few minutes on March 15 and 16 but it was too foggy to see well. The next emergence was for 22 minutes on the 21st when they ate snow near the entrance and Lily gathered some pine boughs for bedding (photos).
They were also out for 25 minutes on the 22nd. The 23rd was the day we were there. Lily was resting ? of the way out of the den but retreated inside 8 minutes before we arrived. That?s about the time we re-grouped a tenth of a mile away before pushing on to the den. She may have heard us talking. I remember watching a mother near her den about this same time of year many years ago and noting that she heard a vehicle coming 4 minutes before it passed, and I didn?t hear it until 2 minutes before it passed.
Out the window, dark-eyed juncos (Junco hyemalis) are coming through. We?re near the southern edge of their range. Old-timers called them slate-colored juncos. Another name is snow birds because they come through in fall about when the snow starts. In spring, it?s when the snow is about to melt. Once this cool spell (20?s F today) passes, we?ll have high temperatures in the 40?s to 60?s and the little bit of snow we have will disappear fast. We?ll be watching for early bears.
Thank you for all you do.
Lynn Rogers, Biologist, Wildlife Research Institute and North American Bear Center
Author
Topic: Jewel and her cubs (Read 2360079 times)