Biscuit doing a lake circuit. She puts on many miles doing this looking for floating dead
salmon and fishing for live
one in the shallows where
they spawn.















Maureen and Biscuit out
for a walk on the beach.














Brandy and cubs at lunch time.

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

Two days ago, I had my sixtieth birthday. It turned out to be a great day, not much of a party due to shortage of people here, but I had fun. First, I had to make a trip to Kurilskoy Lake to sort out last minute arrangements for Maureen who flew to Petropavlovsk yesterday along with most of the crew who work there for the summer. It is six days before her flight to Canada but there are many bureaucratic loose ends for her to pull together in the meantime and it saved us some money to be able to share the helicopter. I have flown the 33 kilometers to the research station about 150 times during the six seasons we have been here and it is always interesting. More than 2 million sockeye salmon have come into the lake to spawn this year and the bears there are having a bountiful time.

When I got back, Maureen had spotted Biscuit coming around the lake on one of her circuits where she looks for washed up dead salmon and catches some live ones in the shallow spawning places. Unlike Kurilskoy Lake it is tough fishing here because most of the second run of sockeye are being held up due to low water. There are so many bears down stream waiting for them that most don't make it through the many shallow places. I had just counted 93 bears on my flight back. Biscuit was about to come by the cabin so Maureen and I got ready to join her for some of her circuit.

It is a surprise and disappointment not to have seen Chico this year. She still might show up, but perhaps not. She was such an inspiration to me. The difference between Biscuit and her was that Chico seemed to understand what our project was about and she would often seek us out to spend the day with her and she seemed often to deliberately work out how to explain something new to us and we likewise to her. It was a constant learning process in the most entertaining ways. She expressed surprise, fear, joyfulness and appreciation very clearly.

It makes sense that siblings do not stay together in the same area. I have often wondered how they decided who would go. Do they have the bear equivalent of flipping a coin? I expected her to at least drop by to say hello. Not much is known about how young bears disperse because it is dangerous to put radio collars on a growing bear for fear of choking them. If you put it on loose they fall off. Because of this very close relationship with Chico I tended to overlook the possibility of the same kind of exploration with Biscuit. At the time she showed a few signs of resenting that. Now I realize how much Biscuit enjoys learning also. She is equally as intelligent but more aloof and unsure how to respond at times. I did not cultivate her friendship in the same way I did with Chico, she and I were not the companions, that Chico and I were. For instance, I deliberately decided not to touch Biscuit so if that practice with Chico became a problem it would be apparent by having Biscuit as a control subject to compare behavior between them. Biscuit teaches us things, but not as deliberately as Chico did.

It is very interesting to watch how Biscuit has learned to use the whole lake basin to her advantage and she uses the area very thoroughly. (It is also a joy to know we gave her and Chico there life here). Unlike Brandy who uses about half of the four miles of shore line, Biscuit uses all of it and some of the river down stream where we have never seen Brandy and all of the creek where pink salmon spawn up stream from the lake on even numbered years. (Only young bears waste time looking for the pinks on odd numbered years). Biscuit also swims the whole lake. A few days ago, while we were crossing in our motorboat, we found her out in the middle, a half kilometer from shore. We tagged along beside her as she followed her nose into the breeze finding dead floating salmon. She has done this since she was one year old, picking up the scent from shore and taking to the water to swim upwind until she finds it. When she looses the smell she traverses to each side until she picks up the scent again.

We often see Biscuit playing with another young male bear. This is the second of her friends and with these bears she is now very gregarious. She travels and plays with him for a while and then they split up again when they become serious about fishing for salmon. A couple evenings ago, we learned something about how they are capable of communicating verbally to one another. The male was up on the side of Biscuit mountain about 200 meters, grazing and she came along the shore. When she got to where the wind was taking her scent to him, Maureen and I watched as he lifted his head and sniffed the air and then said something to her. She could not smell him but from whatever he said to her, Biscuit recognized her friend instantly even though he was mostly hidden in the bush. She climbed up to where he was. They played, then grazed for a while, then Biscuit continued her circuit of the lake.

On my birthday, we went with Biscuit along the north side of the lake. There was a cross wind so the scent was not coming to shore. Bear Skull Bay (our name for it-even the mountains around the lake were not named), at this time of year is full of twenty foot long weeds, growing up from the bottom. I climbed the side of the mountain a ways and looked down to see whether there were sunken or floating salmon within reach. With my binoculars, I spotted a floating sockeye almost hidden in these weeds 100 yards from shore.

I had decided to carry on the type of thing I would do with Chico and have been showing her sunken fish that Maureen and I can sometimes see from a higher vantage point. I do this by throwing a stone to where it is and Biscuit has learned to go to the splash and look under water at that place. If the water is deep she stirs the fish off the bottom with her hind foot and then grabs it in her mouth. I have not seen her dive down into deep water like some bears learn to do but I would not be surprised to see her do it soon, she is such a water rat. This salmon was further out than I could throw a rock so I just threw it in the direction and hoped she would figure out that she had to look beyond the splash. It didn't work and she was getting frustrated because there obviously was no fish where I was telling her by the splash.

The reason we have been able to develop so much trust and get away with what we do without creating problems for ourselves with our study bears is because we don't goof around with them by playing tricks or teasing in any way, especially when it comes to important things like food. Biscuit was beginning to think I was playing a trick on her and I had to think of a way to straighten the problem out quickly. It was a warm day and the water was shallow enough that I could wade out from shore to about where my rocks had been landing -- one third of the distance to the salmon and close enough to put me within throwing range. When Biscuit saw me coming out to her she got excited. I forgot to take a stone from shore and when I got to the edge of the drop off where the weeds began I reached into the water and she though I was picking up the salmon and came bounding over to me. I showed her the stone which she then understood I was going to through and when I pointed in the right direction she stood up beside me and watched. Then I threw the stone with all I had and it landed just a bit short. The long, densely growing weeds, snagging her claws and caught on her legs which made it very difficult for her to swim and the little flowering stems that protrude above the surface make it hard for her to see, but she floundered along until she got to where she thought I had told her it was. Finally she saw it, grabbed it and struggled through the weeds back to shore. It was a ten pound male sockeye and well worth a team effort.

We came upon Brandy with her two cubs fishing in the next bay and Biscuit went around them. There is a lot more acceptance demonstrated between the two females this year. The cubs were whining which meant they wanted Brandy to give them something besides fish. She looked for a place to sit down comfortably on the shore and lean back comfortably. Before we left to catch up with Biscuit we watched the suckling. Whether we show up on foot, by boat or by the Kolb, the cubs are very much over their shyness of us.

- Charlie