Similar to our Bird Watch series, & our Plant Watch Series I’m starting a series to keep track of some of the animals we find on the property.  It’s called: Animal Watch. 

Next up: we have the black bear.

GENUS: Ursus | SPECIES: americanus Pallas| FAMILY: Ursidae |ORDER: Carnivora

We live in the woods and we love it! The forest however is home to many animals both big and small.

I enjoy being surrounded by wildlife, the hoots and screeches of the owls the singing of the birds, the chirps of the crickets it really grounds me. Every time I see a deer go by I get excited and am in awe, even though they like to eat everything, but that is another story.

There are a couple animals around that scare me, they are the bears and the cougars. We have black bears on our property often. The past year we’ve caught at least two mamas with their cubs. I love watching them on the camera, but I would hate to come between them or worse my toddlers come in between them. The kids and I made up a very silly song telling the bears to stay away because we’ve learned that you should be noisy when walking around in the forest. (I’ll see if I can catch them singing it on video.)

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British Columbia has one of the largest black bears populations in the world and that why it is nick named Bear Country. A male black bear weighs between 57 kg to 270 kg which is pretty massive. They are known to live to be more than 30 years old in the wild. A scary fact is they are extremely fast and can run fast both up & down hills. Black bears are omnivores and absolutely love to eat all of our apples! Last year, the male appeared to get drunk off the rotting apples. This was a really bad year for apples for us. A heavy rain washed away our blossoms, so we had a very small crop in which the bears enjoyed.

With bears you need to be bear aware here is a great link from BC Parks about Bear safety

Movie of Mama & her cub.

Becky

Becky is a Clinical Hypnotherapist, Registered Holistic Nutritionist, Landscape & Production Horticulturist, Arborist and budding Herbalist, who recognizes and specializes in the link between healthy soil, the gut and the brain. She also loves being the mom to her two wild and crazy kids Brooke & Connor whom keep her and her ever loving, creative husband Jay on their toes.