It was a busy Fourth of July weekend with the town busting at the seams. The weather was good for the most part and it only rained at night. The three bears that were hanging around here most of the spring moved into Limekiln Campsite. There was more food for the taking in some campsites. One small bear was being fed by hand and becoming a problem. I should say that the people who were feeding him were the problem, but they cannot be put down as he was.
I don’t know if any tickets were issued for feeding the bear or if these people were caught. They are not tame bears; they live in the woods and will get food where they can when wild food is scarce. Berries and nuts aren’t ripe yet and they are eating grasses, and some tree leaves mostly at the top of aspen trees where they might get some ants along with the leaves. There are lots of service or shad bush berries which are being shared by the birds and the bears.
There was one man who lived on Seventh Lake who went back in the Plains and picked these berries for jams, jellies, and pies. He said you had to watch them ripen and get there before the birds and bears stripped the bushes. Along the trail to Icehouse Pond there were lots of these small trees and thorn apples which the wildlife would strip in a couple of days.
When there was an abundance of berries and mayflies, which have been hatching all during June, the Cedar Waxwings have bumper nests of young during August. They are one of the last birds to nest, and they only lay down a couple twigs for a nest and have young. Sometimes, they take American Goldfinch nests apart and make their nests with that material.
The rain from last weekend flooded several Loon nests and their eggs got cold. Some Loons added several inches of material to their nests and still their eggs got chilled in the process. We had some really heavy downpours where more than an inch fell in half an hour. If the Loons were trying to save their nest at that time, the eggs could have been chilled enough from the cold rain not to hatch. When the loon chick is close to hatching, they pretty much fill that eggshell and any cold water from the rain or the lake can chill them enough that they will not hatch.
During that time, the adults will hold tight on to the nest to keep these eggs warm and hatch. They do hear them cheeping inside the eggshell and pick the shells off gently as they can with that big beak to release the chick. That is why the nest is full of little egg chips when there is a successful hatch and sometimes the inner rubber-like sac. That sac sometimes keeps them dry inside the shell when water does get into the nest from boat and wind waves.
The people who live in Texas from Corpus Christy to Houston along that coast are being hit tonight, July 7, with category one Hurricane Berly as it picked up force going across the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico. These folks had gotten a lot of rain from other storms off the gulf in recent weeks, so rain from the hurricane will not help their situation. That storm is going to track north across the country up into the Midwest and up into the Great Lakes by the end of the week.
In my travels during the week, some on land and much on the water, I get to see many neat things. The Loons like to nest on bogs if there are some in the lake’s inlets and bays. Bogs are good, because they go up when it rains and back down during dry periods. Many unique plants grow on these bogs, including orchids and bug-eating plants like sundew and pitcher plants. They catch bugs from the air and horned bladderworts which catch them in their root system under these bogs.
The pitcher plant flowers are past, but the seed heads will remain standing all winter. The delicate sundews, both spatulate and round leaf, put up a small white flower with several on one stem from each plant. Sometimes, you must look close to see if they have caught any bugs, however when they catch a small dragon or damsel fly you can easily see that. It is like the neighboring plants join in on the snack.
In some of these shallow bays, they become covered with white pond lilies. I was just up South Inlet on Raquette Lake this morning and the first bay on the left was white with pond lily flowers. Opposite that, I sat by a big beaver house for my ten-minute count and the babies inside were begging for breakfast. On land, one neat plant that deer don’t eat is viper’s bugloss. If you grabbed it to pick, you would see why the deer don’t even nibble on it. There are few patches along Number Four Road and a big patch on the Stillwater Dam right by the gate.
Banded hummers at Stillwater Restaurant, but that’s another story. See ya.
Photo at top: Viper’s Bugloss. Photo by Gary Lee.
Too bad about the bear. People never seem to learn.
People must have to study double overtime for many long and hard years to become so magnificently (reader chooses some colorful unprintable words).
Wonderful story. Entertaining, informative and well written. ❤️????
My serviceberries are on spindly trees. I used to be able to grab a few of ripe ones but those days are gone. For many years, Robins, Bluebirds, and mostly Waxwings emptied out the trees after ripening. They tried to stick with the ripest berries. But the last couple years, my fuzzy-tailed rats have been grabbing them before the birds. They seem to be eating them before they are ripe. So the birds seem to be getting the leftovers now.
Too bad for the bears. I can only help there were tickets issued. If so, I hope community service is part of the sentence instead of a simple fine. A week of trailwork or habitat enhancement would help compensate for the loss of a bear.
We have canoed in South Inlet off of Raquette Lake. A very special, out-of-the-way place.
People feeding bears. Reminds me of a time I was camping at Baxter State park in Maine. There was a bear knocking over garbage cans with a ranger 4-5 cans behind the bear shoveling garbage back into the cans. The bear went past our site and preceeded to the next site where the parents were dipping bread into honey and having their children hand feed the bear. There are signs every where stating do not feed bears. I spoke to the father that this was dangerous and he told me to mine my own business and …. off. About this time the ranger made it to the bear and whacked it in the butt with his shovel. The bear ran half way up a hill, bawling, and sat down. The ranger went off on the campers and kicked them out of the park. He stayed around to make sure they were packing (gave them 1 hour to leave to avoid arrest). The ranger apoligized to me for the coarse words and explained that this bear was marked with white paint and was removed and brought far away and released. The bear made it back to the campground in a week. That was the second time the bear returned. If it returned the third time it would be killed. This happen in the late 70’s, human ignorance continues.