Charlie Photographing Biscuit eating Knats











Biscuit Eatting Knats










Are You Watching?
Drawing by Maureen

(Click on any Image to see a higher resolution version)

Without any question, Biscuit is a rather sociable bear. Similar to Chico's antics, Biscuit loves to be photographed. Often she makes her way around to our side of the lake and gallops in our direction as soon as she sees us. Often we join her to continue her excursion. As soon as the cameras come out, she seems to know what we want and enjoys the focus we pay her. Bears seem to enjoy being the center of attention. She even enjoys me with the microphone near her, trying to gather sounds she makes. Whatever as long as we take interest. My taping of her vocalizations has been minimal this year as being largely on her own, she doesn't vocally say a lot. When she does, I haven't had the recorder ready.

She really surprised us two days ago. It was raining and glancing over to the end of Duck Lake I noticed a bear had dug a nest in the muddy embankment. It was a young male I did not recognize. A bit later, I was up on the roof of the cabin to further observe this bear and it was Biscuit in the same nest. She yawned, stretched, shook off the rainwater and wandered over to the young male to rub her head against him. Full of excitement that this may be an indication that she will breed this year, I called Charlie. He walked over near them to observe.

When he approached, the young male jumped up the hill chuffing but looked back in dismay to see Biscuit was not afraid of this human intrusion and had not followed him in his hasty departure. He sat down, chuffing and moaning loudly to Biscuit to come with him. Apparently, the look on his face was one of total astonishment that she was so accepting of this person so close. Charlie was about 200 feet away and did not go closer, not wanting to cause more anxiety. Charlie retreated and the male came back down to be with Biscuit who immediately joined him and licked his face. It is unusual but possible for a bear to breed this late in the season. I was already thinking of names for her cubs. They stayed together for two days. Full of anticipation of cubs on the way we went out to see them yesterday but only the male was there.

There has been a lot of speculation about whether Biscuit will become aggressive towards us at some point as she matures. We insisted we had to prove that she would not change in her good manners around us. We are pleased to document that in the company of the male bear there was absolutely no shift in her behavior towards us - not when she was with the male or the day after when she was alone again. The next steps will be to be around her when she is in the breeding mode and of course when she has cubs. We feel this has been an important goal of our study to gather this information. One of the main reasons, we are continuing this study until 2003 is to address the sustainability question. Can the safe situation we have created be maintained? We believe so but must prove it - thus the approach Charlie made to Biscuit and her friend.

Biscuit we discovered later was alone again on the other side of the lake. Last night she was still alone. We don't know what all this is about. We are guessing she is definitely maturing but likely not in the breeding mode, yet anyway. Possibly this is simply a friendship she developed with the young male. Later she knew he was in the area by his scent and we saw her gallop frantically in his direction, joining him minutes later. This kind of friendship is not something we are familiar with. Maybe she missed Chico so much she simply made this friend last fall?

With fish not far off in the lake, Biscuit circles the lake routinely gathering whatever she can. There were millions of bugs (knats) washed up on shore one day and a dead duck another. Her sense of smell still astonishes me. She can smell a dead fish in the water even though it is on the bottom from 100 yards away. Likely it is some oil on the surface of the water that gives the location away. Charlie saw her crossing the tundra, stopping and instantly picking up the speed of her walk following a scent in the moss. It was exactly where I had walked an hour earlier. She went to where I had stopped to look at a flower and so on until she was directly behind me, curious about what I was looking at with my camera. Charlie was curious what I would do when I turned around. She was 5 feet away when I realized she was there. I laughed at the success of her game. She loves to come up behind me and see me jump a bit. Great sense of humor! I was very calm this time and greeted her as I would an old friend.

My drawings are progressing well now and seem to be what I hoped they would be: more a clue to understanding the feelings of bears. Finally the painting is progressing and a lot more explorative than in previous years, which I was ready for. Change is always a struggle but now I can say it has been worth it.

- Maureen