Last week, I interrupted a series of columns on wildflowers to accommodate a column on a bear sighting that I had at my parents’ house during Easter weekend. I ended that column with an opportunity for you, dear reader, to cast a vote. Did you want me to continue on with the topic of bears, or did you want me to go back to wildflowers? Well, the results were unambiguously in favor of bears. Of 26 votes cast, the final tally was bears 22 and wildflowers, four. So this week is another bear week and next week I will return to the topic of wildflowers of the Northeast.
I have no way of knowing that the bear in my mother’s oak tree was a female, but for the purposes of this story let’s just agree to make that assumption. I will also note that the fact that this bear was somewhat small and alone suggests that she was a young bear who had not yet had offspring of her own. Female black bears don’t reproduce until they are about five years old. So here’s what we can infer about her life up to this point.
Born in January while her mother was in hibernation for the winter, this bear would have been tiny. Kept warm by her mother, she would have nursed and grown in the confines of the winter den. It is possible that this little cub didn’t see much light at first and only knew of the existence of her mother and any siblings that were born with her.
By now, many of us have seen that video clip of a mother bear trying to wrangle four little cubs. This video went viral and gained sufficient national attention that it even appeared on the national news one evening. For the record, the “normal” number of cubs in a litter is two or three. To have four cubs is a handful and the record (from Pennsylvania) is six cubs in one litter. Just the idea of caring for six newborn bear cubs has me exhausted already.
At some point in March, mother bears around the country will have to leave the safety of their winter dens to find food and water. Since bears don’t eat during hibernation, a nursing mother is under tremendous pressure to keep herself and her cubs alive and at some point she simply must refuel her body. So, with her tiny little toddlers in tow, she must venture out into the world. For the cubs, this must be as thrilling and exciting as it is frightening. It is a big world after all.
The cubs spend every minute of their lives learning. What is good to eat? Where can I find it? What is that sound? Is it dangerous? You name it, the little bears have to soak it in. The mother will care for them throughout the summer and into the fall and they grow and grow. Then in late October or early November, the family will return to the den for one last family sleepover. Bear hibernation is more of a deep sleep than a true hibernation, but all of the bears will change physiologically so that they do not eat, drink, urinate or defecate for four to five months.
The following spring, the family will wake up and once again go in search of food. This is when the relationship between mother and cubs is just about over because the mother will engage in mating in May and June and, just prior to that, she will break ties with her cubs. The young bears will have to go out on their own and the young females will not begin breeding themselves until they are 3-5 years old, depending on what part of the country they are in and what sort of habitat they live in. Bears in developed areas, with access to garbage and bird feeders, will often breed at younger ages than bears that are “way out in the wild.”
So, the young bear in my mother’s oak tree was clearly looking for food and she clearly had been there before because she knew right where to look for it. Bears, like humans, have good memories that allow them to return to places with good food at the right time of year to take advantage of it. Surely you have a favorite diner or restaurant that you visit while travelling to certain places around the world and just as surely you could find your way back to this important location in your life.
And, just as surely as you would be disappointed to find your special restaurant closed, so, too, must a bear be disappointed to find that the feeders have been taken down. The young bear in the tree was looking at the spot where a feeder used to be and then looking at me as if to say, “really?” All she wanted was something to eat and, as the light faded, she eventually climbed down the tree and walked off into the woods. I have photos, but it was so dark that all of the photos are blurry.
So will this year be the year that our young female bear finally starts her journey down the path that leads to motherhood? Will she get herself all straightened out in the next month and then find herself the recipient of some amorous attention from a male? Is this the year when she dips her toe into the limpid pool of ursine romance? Only she knows, but if she does, then next spring she may return to that oak tree with some tiny little cubs of her own — out on the town looking for something delicious to eat.
Bill Danielson has been a professional writer and nature photographer for 23 years and he took that picture of hepatica flowers in 1999. He has worked for the National Park Service, the US Forest Service, The Nature Conservancy and the Massachusetts State Parks and currently teaches high school biology and physics. Visit www.speakingofnature.com for more information (including his email address), or head o ver to Speaking of Nature on Facebook.