Bear Project Update

In one of my earlier blogs, I referred to my Bear Project. Because of the damage and repairs on my Tracy home, I’ve been spending more time in Arnold. This extra time provides me with an opportunity to focus on my Bear Project. I have identified three different bears by their markings. I have collected photos on each bear. Originally, I planned to collect as many photos as possible and document the cycles of each bear’s visit. I thought that the time between each appearance might be an indication of the size of each bear’s territory.

According to the American Expedition/Black Bear Facts concerning general size of Black Bear territories: “Black bears usually don’t travel very far. A female bear will often have a range of 2-6 miles, while a male’s range may extend over a much larger area (up to 15 miles), and overlap the ranges of several females.”

https://forum.americanexpedition.us/american-black-bear-facts

Of course, that’s if my bears follow the same path habitually. If they do, then it takes approximately 4 hours to cover their territory. My bears are independent thinkers, however, and they showed me that I have a lot to learn!

Each of my field cameras was placed to work with our Alarm Systems and Blink cameras to provide the greatest coverage, but sometimes I learn of the bear activity unexpectedly. One such case occurred on October 1, at 5 AM, the bear that I refer to as the Juvenile Bear (my most frequent visitor) walked through our backyard. This occurred approximately 15-30 minutes before we took the dogs out. I was completely unaware of the bear until I pulled the memory card of field camera #4, then I was shocked and alarmed. That was a little too close for comfort.

Note: Our alarm systems were offline, and a service tech was due to arrive that day to correct the problem. Otherwise, we would have been notified of the presence of our furry visitor.

The next series of visitations occurred during the 2nd phase of the Northern California power outage (10/09-10/10), which lasted 26 hours for our area. There were absolutely no lights, and on October 10 at 10:49 PM the juvenile bear walked through the yard again. We were not alerted because the alarm system was not functioning due to the power outage. The field cameras were on battery power and functioning. So, I learned of the bear activity after pulling the memory cards, which was after the power was restored. Since there were nine days between the bear’s visits, I thought that was very reasonable.

The field cameras recorded further bear visits, which were completely unexpected. Four hours later in the wee hours of October 11th, the juvenile bear came back through the backyard again. These visitations were photographed by field camera #1. Other cameras picked up bear activity at 12:24 AM and then at 4:46 AM. Saturday, October 12th, the same juvenile bear visited again. It seemed that the bear was circling the house, and the bear’s movement was documented by multiple cameras. I collected the memory cards from all 5 field cameras as soon as possible.

Note: I discovered that two of my field cameras needed replacement of batteries and two others had incorrect timestamps. Not sure how that happened. I always verify the date and time when I change batteries. I corrected the problem for future photographs.