Black Bear - (Ursus americanus)

It's pretty common knowledge that black bears are sprinkled liberally throughout the upstate New York area. Obviously you aren't going to see them during the winter months. Bears in this area hibernate, but can be awakened, although there just isn't any good reason for them to venture out in the cold. Come springtime the bears emerge and grab something to eat. You'd be 'hungry as a bear' too if you'd taken a few months long nap and that's exactly what they have on their mind; food. 

During the winter months we normally leave the bird feeders outside at night. This gives the early birds a chance to have breakfast before we food folks have our coffee. We sometimes did bring them in when a big storm was expected, but even then they were a good photo backdrop decorated with snow and ice.  In 2007 we had left the feeders out during the spring and summer, so along comes 2008 and we just 'continued on continuing on' not expecting anything to change. We were wrong.

Bears need a pretty big territory, easily covering 2 to 20 square miles as part of their regular routine. Unlike 2007 where we were not in a selected bear territory  (or if we were it was just dumb luck they didn't visit), spring 2008 started off with a bang. The local paper printed a photo of three black bears on the edge of a wooded area not half a mile from our property. It was a good confirmation of what we already knew since some shepherd's hooks holding feeders, a wheelbarrow with sunflower seeds, and bear paw prints in the yard and on window panes had already announced their presence. Bears have a very keen sense of smell (15 times greater than people) and can detect food sources three miles away.  We learned to put trash cans in our sheds after a bear removed one bag from our can of trash to find the treasure of the second filled with edible garbage.

While the bear(s) made numerous return visits to the yard in the early spring before we wised up and started bringing in the bird feeders every night, they never appeared during the daylight hours. Bears are diurnal and do forage day and night. Quite a few times we'd hear them outside at night and flip on the porch light for a better view, but were never able to get a decent photo.  Several times we saw one standing on our porch batting at a sunflower seed feeder right outside the door. We finally rigged up an outside light and waited, but they never returned again while the light was on to make photos possible. They did however sneak back after the light was out, toying with us and defying our photo attempts.

Luckily, we know a relative of Dan Pemrick who took the photos published in the paper.  The following week or so, there were many complaints of female bears with cubs visiting garages and yards in the nearby village looking for anything to eat.  It was very early spring and natural vegetation, fruits, berries and even insects were in short supply here.  We don't know if others more successful than we were in photographing  any bears, but we are very grateful to Dan and his mom for allowing us to show our feeder thieves on this site.