In the book writing world, which is where I live most of my life, books come and go relatively quickly. For example, I have just finished a two-year project for a new book on the Canids of North America. It will be a book mainly about wolves and to a much lesser extent, coyote and foxes.
This book will be out sometime in the spring of 2012. However, my point is I am finished with this book and now have moved onto the next book. By the time the wolf book comes out it will be old news to me, because I will have moved onto a new book. The new book is about bears.
I’ve been traveling a lot recently to photograph some very specific bear images and will continue on this mission for the next two years. Nearly everything I will do over this time will involve bears. All of this is a very long way of saying, that I just returned from a trip to northern Minnesota where I spent a couple days photographing black bears.
Walking with bears
Getting up early before the sun is a normal part of this job. Packing up gear and making sure the camera batteries are charged and that I have enough memory cards is all normal stuff. What isn’t normal is spending all day walking around with a half a dozen bears in the woods.
I think black bears are one of the coolest animals in the woods. A mature male can weigh up to 900 pounds and stand over six feet tall. Females are considerably smaller coming in below 500 pounds. I find that guessing the weight of bears is very difficult. I remember one time I was leading a tour and we stopped into the North American Bear Center in Ely. They have three or four captive bears. I took a good long look at each bear trying to guess their weight. Near the viewing window is a scale and feeding station. When they put food out the bears would step up onto the scale to get the food. I was shocked that the bears I thought weighed 300 pounds were well over 500 pounds. Needless to say, despite the fact that I am good at guess the weight of some animals and birds I am clueless when it comes to black bears.
Not always black
Black bears are not always black. In fact they can be a wide variety of colors. They can be brown, tan or even cinnamon. I’ve even seen bears that were half black and have cinnamon. One thing for sure, each and every bear has its own distinctive look. Some are long and narrow, others are round and plump. Some have long narrow snouts while others have short snouts. Some black bears have a white spot in the center of their chest. Others have a small white dashes or a single hash mark. Still others have no mark at all.
Black bears are true omnivores. They will eat whatever they can find, catch or steal. If you recall from my last column, recently I photographed a grizzly bear stealing a deer carcass from a pair of wolves. It would be safe to say that the majority of a black bear’s diet is vegetable matter such as grass, nuts, berries and roots. They also feed extensively on insects. One time I watched a Grizzly bear turn over one bison pie (scat) after another licking up all the insects underneath. I was so interested in this behavior that I started to turn over all the bison pies I could find and low and behold there were all sorts of insects and earth worms under each one.
It always amazes me that such a large animal could sustain itself on a diet of mainly plants, insects and small amounts of meat. It might be a lesson for all of us.
Mother black bears give birth to tiny cubs in February while still hibernating in the den. So at this time of year there are many mother bears with tiny cubs. This past week I saw three mothers with "spring" cubs. Baby bears stay with their mothers for 15 to 17 months. This means that mother bears only mate every other year.
After two days of intense photography I came away with nearly 3,000 images. No doubt some of these will end up in my new bear book. Until next time …
Stan Tekiela is an author- naturalist and wildlife photographer. He travels the U.S. to study and photograph wildlife. You can follow him on twitter.com and facebook.com or visit his web page at www.naturesmart.com. His column appears regularly in the Advocate.