Estate Find 53 was back in January, and this is simply a continuation of the story.
I had to go away for a while, ended up returning at roughly 1 AM this morning – spooked a handful of deer near the end of the driveway, but otherwise all seemed quiet. I got the first load of schtuff out of the car, had a quick bathroom break, and headed back out to get another load, flipping on the porch and walkway lights as I did so. Immediately outside of the front door, I heard a scuffle/thump right out of sight behind a camellia bush (so, not two meters away,) and took out my pocket flashlight to look around, suspecting a raccoon or something. Found a dark shape in the yard that I couldn’t place for a moment, and pieced together that it was one of the bird feeders when the eyes reflected back to me. Went right back in, grabbed the camera and the Vivitar 285 flash, adjusted settings quickly, and slowly went back out again. Focus was by the pocket flashlight held in my teeth, and couldn’t continue when my quarry looked away from me and I could no longer use the eye reflections, but I got a proof shot at least.
That, naturally, is an American black bear (Ursus americanus.) So, here’s the thing. After two raids and finding bear scat in the yard, we began taking the feeders in at night and set up a motion-detecting camera right by the feeders. And that was it; never saw any further signs, except for another pile of shit way down in the backyard that might have been there any length of time. No camera alerts, no signs of other foraging, nothing zip nada zilch. We figured our neighborhood bear had moved on to other, more promising yards. About two weeks ago, the camera came detached and we simply took it back inside.
But we left the bird feeders out overnight while we were away, for two nights, and this is what we get. A quick look at the aftermath:
We have here the main bird feeding station, all crooks bent over a bit, one feeder emptied while somehow not removing it from the cook, another feeder opened on the ground (green thing to lower right.) As I watched from inside this very window, the bear returned and rooted around in this area, ensuring that it had emptied both feeders but hoping for more (I guess since I was home now.) But this meant the bear and I were separated by less than two meters, albeit with a wall and window in between.
The other one was more impressive.
That’s the other crook that held a feeder, in fact the one seen in the first pic, visible as an out-of-focus splash of yellow in the background. Obviously the bear had been at this for a while, spooked momentarily by the arrival of the car, and again but less so by my re-emergence from the house. I measured it: we were 11 meters apart at that encounter, and I have to say, it was an experience to be standing there that close to a wild bear. Not terrifying, since I know black bears tend to be more timid and spooky than their brown cousins, but I was definitely still on high alert. The bear, meanwhile, appeared less concerned (even though I probably outweighed it by at least 30 kilos.) Size-wise, it was about the same as a large Newfoundland or Great Pyrenees, perhaps a meter high at the shoulder and somewhere in the rough neighborhood of 70 kilos? I mean, I didn’t try to pick it up…
Curiously, that crook remained embedded firmly enough in the ground that it got quite malformed by the bear’s administrations to remove the feeder:
Getting this back into reasonable shape was a little tricky, mostly in finding a way to anchor it to reverse those bends. None of the bird feeders was irreparable, either, in fact only one was notably damaged, having its loop for hanging pulled out; another had a bent bird perch. Even the suet cage was somehow intact, emptied despite being clipped closed. Either the bear had an extremely adept tongue, or it had inadvertently snapped the cage closed again after cleaning it out.
The bird feeders are all restored and refilled now, but yes, they will be coming in at nights, and the camera will be back in place shortly. At least the bear was complacent enough to allow me to obtain direct proof. The property keeps on providing subjects…