Lily and Hope - The Black Bear and Cub

So good that Hope has now been radio collard, now she wont be lost to us, its a comfort. It's lovely that Juliets cubs have been named, its much nicer when they have names, it brings them to life I think as individual bears. So who is Lily hanging around with or hanging around after? it sounds as if she has been following at least three male bears.

Thanks for the updates Anne-Marie, your doing a grand job for us all.

littlewid-x-

Fantastic news the making of a new documentary and gps on Hope.

Im really looking forward to the new documentary as well AM. It will be great to put names to faces and see the work they are writing about in real life.

Little Hope in a GPS I wonder how big it is and if it hinders her any.

Great updates again AM!

SM

Here is a picture of the gorgeous little Hope in her new GPS collar. I think it makes her look like a grown up bear!!

https://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/photo.php?pid=6440573&id=263755115498

Such a relief that they have it on her.

Hope, Juliet, and Embarrassment

Hope’s radio-collar showed us one of her hangouts this morning—and it makes us wonder how a little cub like this knows. She was near the tip of a peninsula—almost an island, out of the usual bear traffic. She was looking down from a broad crotch 50 feet up a big white pine. She stretched and scratched, looked awhile, and eventually came down for her food. This evening, she was on the same peninsula but was at another white pine where she and Lily had bedded. Little Hope apparently retained a lot of information from her time with Lily. The fact that Hope is using some of the same trees Lily used might increase the chance of them meeting up, although Lily is not seeking the same kind of security for her resting spots that little Hope is. So Lily is not retreating to the tips of peninsulas and using secure white pines like Hope is. After eating, Hope played with sticks and bark at the base of her white pine. She looked relaxed but was totally attentive to any unidentified sound. A hummingbird hovered near, and the whir of the wings put her on full alert.

The radio-collaring last night took time. Hope was defensive. She is developing trust more slowly than most bears we’ve met. It could be her unusual circumstance, but we think it is also her personality. She seemed more defensive and less trusting than usual even when she was with Lily. There are too many factors to figure it out easily.

This afternoon, we visited Juliet and her 3 cubs and soon realized we’d have to make an embarrassing admission. One is a male. We must have gotten them mixed up going backward and forward on the video. So there’s a Boy Named Sue. It’s Sharon, Shirley, and the Boy Named Sue. We’ll probably call him Boy for short. Someday there will be a female named just plain Sue. Juliet’s cubs are doing well, but we think Hope is larger. We wish we could see them side by side.

We asked a lactation expert what she thought might be involved hormonally in Lily and Hope separating. She and we wondered if one cub might not stimulate enough oxytocin and prolactin for full feelings of motherhood. We’ll come back to that subject after we look at more data from the 44 years of study. We are also considering Lily’s young age (3), but 3 is the most common age for black bears to produce their first cubs in Pennsylvania and New Jersey where there is top bear habitat. There are no absolutes. What we are seeing in our data is a lot of variability surrounding any behavior we have tried to assess. We think of behaviors as falling under a bell-shaped curve. Most fall near the middle, but if you get a big enough sample size, there are some out in the tails doing things a little different. We know several females that raised single cubs just fine, but there can be exceptions. RC gave birth to a single cub as a 4-year-old and lost it in May. Cookie gave birth to a single cub as a 3-year-old and abandoned it in August—too late to mate again. And then there was Lily. When we saw her yesterday we asked her how she could do such a thing. She didn’t answer. She just got up and walked away. We’ll have to figure it out on our own. More to come.

Thank you again for your support for our research and education.

— Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center

And what an adorable picture
https://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/photo.php?pid=6447963&op=1&view=all&subj=463269959477&aid=-1&auser=0&oid=463269959477&id=263755115498

that is such a sweet photo - great update thanks Anne-Marie

lai

Love both those pictures but especially the second one, so funny. its nice to see Hope with her collar on and your right Anne-Marie, it does make her look so grown up.

its maybe a good thing that Hope is a little more un-trusting of humans, it could keep her out of trouble but she does need to trust the team.

Loved the info about one of Juliets cubs being male and being called Sue.....reminds me of the Johny Cash song " A Boy Named Sue"

Wonder if we will ever get an answer as to why Lily abandoned Hope?

Thanks for the update Anne-Marie

littlewid-x-

Update June 29, 2010 – 10:01 PM CDTShare
Today at 05:04
A New Hope Strategy


Hope - June 29, 2010
This morning, as Sue was putting out Hope’s food, she saw Hope eat wild Canada Mayflower berries.

This afternoon, the BBC crew was filming in a pretty shoreline location when they noticed a radio-collared cub high in a white pine. Hope eventually came down and ran away. We were glad to hear it.

This evening, she was four tenths of a mile away up a different white pine in the vicinity of where she and Lily split the second time. She wandered around a bit while getting her food and ate some wild dewberries growing there. We’re on the lookout for her droppings to see what else she’s eating. Both kinds of berries are eaten by other bears. Somehow, she just knows.

In the days leading up to the radio-collaring, we attempted to gain Hope’s trust. We even tried giving her bottles to satisfy her need to suckle. Rehab facilities hold cubs and give them bottles until the cubs learn to lap up formula. Hope didn’t understand bottles, so that method of gaining trust failed. In trying to radio-collar her, we could see how little she trusted us and how much she feared being touched. It took about a hundred attempts to get the radio-collar around her neck. With each attempt, she jumped back and was defensive. She was hungry enough to keep coming back for more formula and mealworms, but became ever more wary. Finally, she diverted her attention to the food enough for us to put the collar loosely on her. We wondered if it would fall off. Now that we see it’s staying on and that it’s very loose, we believe it will stay on and stay loose as she doubles in size, probably long enough for her to enter a den.

With that in mind, we’re considering just bringing food to whatever tree she takes refuge in when she hears us coming, and then leaving. We’re guessing that a little cub with no companions and a strong urge to play could bond too closely with caregivers. We doubt that bonding with us would transfer to others—as she showed today when she encountered the BBC crew. However, we’re considering minimizing her exposure to us. We’re already minimizing her exposure to other people by keeping her location secret, which isn’t hard because she moves around so much that even we don’t know where we’ll find her!

When her droppings show that she’s eating enough wild food to survive, we’ll cut back or eliminate the supplemental food. Already, we’re making sure the supplemental food doesn’t influence her movements by taking it to her rather than continuing to maintain the feeding station.

Each day, Hope shows us a little more, and we know a little more about how to proceed. We are impressed with her good condition. We’ll know more as we find her droppings and follow her travels by telemetry.

Today we learned that someone gave us a possibly wonderful surprise by entering the North American Bear Center into the Facebook Chase Community Giving Project

https://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/411838192-north-american-bear-center?src=charity-details-wall-post-friend&ref=mf

Much appreciated! There’s so much we want to do for bears. People are moving into bear country like never before and there’s an urgent need to replace misconceptions with facts. To do this, we want to reach out to classrooms, children, and families. We want to upgrade bear.org to handle the increased traffic and add information, videos, and den cams. We want to build “The Hope Center” to rehabilitate injured or orphaned bears back into the wild. We want to build a classroom/office/library building to expand our educational efforts and house staff for greater outreach to bears around the world. We want to add exhibits on “Endangered Bears” and “Coexisting with Bears.” To do that, we want to pay off the debt, and move forward. Entering the Bear Center into this contest could help. Of the many projects in the running, the leader has a little over 6 thousand votes. More on this later.

Thank you for your support in so many ways.

—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center

And another gorgeous Hope picture!
https://www.facebook.com/#!/photo.php?pid=6456973&op=1&view=all&subj=463734599477&aid=-1&auser=0&oid=463734599477&id=263755115498

Thanks for the update AM.

I voted on the Chase link. I hope they can sort out the debt and move forward with their plans.

Hope is a fab little bear, great picture.

SM

Lovely update and such a sweet photo - also voted on Chase Link

Lai

Lovely picture Ann-Marie, she is a darling isnt she. Wonderful update again, Hope is teaching them so much isnt she.

Voted for them on the Chase link and added it to my FB as well hopefully for more votes.

littlewid-x-

Thanks for the updates again AM. I've voted it took me ages because I could'nt remember my password, but I thought if that little girl has the determination to survive, then the least I could do is vote.
WS

Update June 30, 2010 – 11:01 PM CDTShare
Today at 05:44
Hope on the Move

Hope has not visited the feeding site since 9:15 PM on June 28. If we didn’t have the radio-collar on her, we’d be worried. We suspect that bringing the food to her is allowing her to explore more widely. This morning, she was still at the same white pine she was at last night, so she probably spent the night there. Back when we walked with bears for 24 hours at a time, we found that they typically went to sleep an hour or two after sunset and woke up about a half hour before sunrise. Most of their travel (and a couple naps midday) was during the day. Of course, bears that are trying to avoid people while seeking garbage or bird feeders often become more nocturnal, but that doesn’t apply to little Hope. The only time she was seen in a yard (May 25) was late afternoon, and she ran as soon as she was spotted. In fact, she traveled 2 miles back to the area where she and Lily had spent the spring.


Raspberries beginning to ripen!
Today, Hope moved 0.46 miles south to another area she had visited with Lily. If she traveled in a direct line, she may have fed on the many raspberries lining the route. This evening, she was at the exact tree where we had found her with Lily on May 29. The navigational abilities of this young cub are somewhat of a surprise. Not entirely, though. In earlier studies (back in the early 70’s), we noticed that little cubs that accompanied their mother on a trip 20 miles outside their usual territory remembered the distant location and returned there as independent adults—the only bears from that study area known to travel there. We found that out when two of the cubs (a male and a female) were killed by hunters there and their ear-tags were turned in. The new methods and technology show so much more these days.

An interesting feature of Hope’s location this evening is there is an old den there that would fit her, and it looked like she’d been in it from the fresh dust on leaves outside the den. If it wasn’t her, it was somebody else. Another thing the new technology and methods are showing us is how early in the year bears check out den sites. The earliest we know of is July 19 when we videotaped June digging the den in which she gave birth to her first litter that winter. We’ll see if Hope uses the den we think she checked out today. Interestingly, when we located Braveheart today to change her GPS unit, she was also near a den.

Now that we are taking Hope’s formula to wherever she goes, we’ll see if she begins exploring beyond the area she learned with Lily.

We visited Lily today and found her sleeping alone in early afternoon—no sign of a male.

We also saw Big Harry stomp-walking toward a location where another male had seen Harry and ran. Harry got to the location, ran after the male, came back, then vigorously scent-marked a balsam fir tree by standing up and rubbing his back on it. He stood 82 inches from the bottom of his feet to the tip on his up-stretched nose. It looked like he was still feeling competitive toward rival males. His testosterone will begin to wane shortly, and they’ll all get along more peacefully. Back in 1976, we found that testosterone is high from late in the denning period until mid-July (McMillin, J. M., U. S. Seal, L. L. Rogers, and A. W. Erickson. 1976. Annual testosterone rhythm in the black bear (Ursus americanus). Biology of Reproduction 15:163-167.) Click on the title if you want to see the whole paper. All the papers Lynn wrote are available at www.bearstudy.org. Hover over Research, click on Research Papers, then click on Black Bear. Any titles that are underlined can be seen in their entirety.

Thank you for getting behind the grant opportunity from Chase Community Giving. You have already put us into 18th place. You can vote only once for each nonprofit, but you can select 20 nonprofits to vote for. The winner gets $250,000 and the 4 runners-up each get $100,000. This is big!

VOTE for the North American Bear Center:
https://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/411838192-north-american-bear-center

VOTE for the Wildlife Research Institute:
https://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/237320150-wildlife-research-institute

Thank you for all you do to support our bear research and education.

—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center

Sorry for the delay! I have soooo much on today!!

Thanks for the update Anne-Marie.

I love the daily news on our little bear.

Lai

Thank you for the update Anne-Marie. its all sounding good isnt it and it looks as if the bears including Hope are checking out dens.
We are all learning so much about bears from Hope and Lily and the others.

WS, well done for persevering with your password to vote

littlewid-x-

A few Hope Status updates to start with and a piccie

Lily the Black Bear Hope made a big move today. We're tracking her down now. More later.

Lily the Black Bear Never did catch up with Hope tonight. Walked over a mile in before giving up because she was moving away. We'll try again tomorrow morning. We're tied up with the BBC crew now -- yes, night filming -- so not sure the 'official' update will get done tonight. This pic is from the morning feeding.

And another gorgeous photo!!
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=6473773&id=263755115498

And here is the update:
Update July 1, 2010 – 11:54 PM CDTShare
Today at 06:33
Hope still moving


Hope became a little more independent today, moving beyond the area she used with Lily.

This morning she was still in familiar territory—actually very near the place where we first touched her. At that time—May 28—she was with Lily and so weak and lethargic that we gave her the first food. She was so desperate for the food that she endured touching. That’s when we realized how emaciated she had become and how little milk Lily was producing with her clogged milk ducts.

Today, Hope moved into virgin territory, traveling a minimum distance of 0.75 miles south. We tried to catch up to her this evening, but she traveled south until it was too dark for us to continue. She will have to eat extra wild food. Actually, it’s about time to cut back on the supplements with so many berries ripening. We can’t wait until morning to see how far she travels. As we write this, she likely has settled down for the night.

On the way out of the forest, we saw Lily. Her GPS locations showed that she was also heading south. We pray they meet and unite. Sure would make our lives easier!

It’s time to check Lily’s estrus status again, but she may be moving past mating. We homed in on her telemetry signal early this afternoon and saw her walking carefree alone and not sniffing the air and ground for other bears like she has been doing. We’re ready to see what she does next.

Thank you for many things. Today, 2 boxes of pastries arrived as a surprise at the Bear Center for the team. We see your votes for the Bear Center and Wildlife Research Institute on Chase Community Giving. That is so big for us. It can make a huge difference for both the North American Bear Center and the Wildlife Research Institute.

To vote for the North American Bear Center, click on this link and vote. Right now the Bear Center is in 7th place with about 3800 votes. Thank you.

https://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/411838192-north-american-bear-center?src=twitter

To vote for the Wildlife Research Institute, click on this link and vote. Right now the WRI is in 35th place with about 1200 votes. Thank you again.

https://apps.facebook.com/chasecommunitygiving/charities/237320150-wildlife-research-institute?src=twitter

Don’t forget that each person can vote once for each organization.

Thank you for all you are doing to support our research and education.

—Lynn Rogers and Sue Mansfield, Biologists, North American Bear Center

https://www.facebook.com/lily.the.black.bear?ref=ts#!/photo.php?pid=6473860&op=1&view=all&subj=464622509477&aid=-1&auser=0&oid=464622509477&id=263755115498

Wouldn't it be wonderful if they did reunite? And that Lily accepted her back!! Fingers crossed!

I hope so AM. If Lily and Hope did reunite, under their own steam, it would be the extra care and knowledge learnt from her mum that should see Hope hibernate successfully this winter. I have everything crossed.

SM

Great updates - thanks for posting Anne-Marie. Fingers crossed for Lily and Hope, and can't wait to see what the BBC crew produce.

Lai

Anne-Marie, it would be brilliant if they reunited and Lily accepted Hope back, what an end to this story that would be.....or would it be the start of a whole new story, whatever happens these two bears have captured our hearts, but it would be nice if they denned together as can happen sometimes, so fingers crossed.
The first picture of Hope is gorgous.

littlewid-x-

Here are the weekend updates. But first I have just come across a video clip of Hope on the day they found her, the second time!