Blog #11—No Lions, No Tigers, Just Bears. Oh, My!

All photos, videos, maps, charts, and text © Hilton Pond North

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NO LIONS, NO TIGERS,

JUST BEARS. OH, MY!

#11: 1-20 May 2025

Random observations about Blue Ridge Birds and Nature

BIRDS BANDED AT HILTON POND NORTH

DURING THE CURRENT PERIOD

1-20 May 2025

● Banded in 2025: 25 species, 807 individuals

● All-time totals, March 2024 to present: 69 species, 2,819 individuals

● Notable recaptures/returns for the period (all birds banded and recaptured locally):

American Goldfinch banded 03/10/24; now 3rd-year male

American Goldfinch banded 03/14/24; now 3rd-year male

American Goldfinch banded 06/27/24; now 3rd-year male

American Goldfinch banded 03/08/24; now 3rd-year female

American Goldfinch banded 08/25/24; now after-2nd-year female

American Goldfinch banded 08/25/24; now 3rd-year female

American Goldfinch banded 08/26/24; now 3rd-year male

Carolina Chickadee banded 06/28/24; now after-2nd-year female

White-breasted Nuthatch banded 09/05/24; now 2nd-year male

Tufted Titmouse banded 03/23/24; now after-2nd-year male

Tufted Titmouse banded 09/01/24; now 2nd-year male

Tufted Titmouse banded 09/05/24; now 2nd-year male

Tufted Titmouse banded 09/05/24; now 2nd-year unknown

Tufted Titmouse banded 09/09/24; now 2nd-year female

All photos, videos, maps, charts, and text © Hilton Pond North

The table below shows birds banded during the most recent period, plus each species' tally for the year and the total for each since banding commenced locally in March 2024. New species for this year are in RED.

Aside from all the bear action at Hilton Pond North, our recent news is we once again spent a week in Fayette County WV at the New River Birding and Nature Festival, guiding, lecturing, and—of course—offering bird banding demonstrations for attendees from around the country. (We also read one of our bird poems.) The Festival has been held annually since 2002; we participated in all but one, due to illness.

We weren't even present at Hilton Pond North for our first encounter with American Black Bears, Ursus americanus, at our new home in upper Ashe County NC, but a motion-activated Blink security camera provided concrete evidence of a bear's visit. The encounter above occurred last year on 23 June while we were gone to a family reunion; upon return we found the bear's handiwork: A permanently bent pole and a suet feeder that had been either stepped on or smashed by powerful jaws. Since things could have been far worse we were grateful for minor damage but wondered if bears would be a constant impediment to research work at our new study site in the Blue Ridge. Our concerns subsided—until this month.

We realize conventional wisdom about bears says offering a potential food source will attract them sooner or later as they wander seeking mates or something to eat. Some wildlife officials even suggest folks not maintain bird feeders at all but especially during spring and fall when bears are often on the move. Alas, those two seasons happen to coincide with bird migration that is a focus for our work, and we need to feed birds in ALL seasons to draw them in for humane capture, banding, and release.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, and text © Hilton Pond North. (Image above courtesy Katie Fallon)

All photos, videos, maps, charts, and text © Hilton Pond North

One of the species we banded at the Festival was to many a surprise—a migrant Lincoln's Sparrow (above) en route to breeding grounds somewhere across southern Canada. Birders are sometimes confused by this species, whose buffy upper breast and finely streaked underparts superficially resemble other sparrows. Look also for the gray face and pale eye ring.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, and text © Hilton Pond North. (Image above courtesy Kim Pierce Lascola)

The banding table is our favorite place to teach. With a bird in hand we can show our audience details they might be unlikely to notice through binoculars or at a feeder. Even experienced birders are sometimes amazed by various aspects of a bird's up-close external morphology. Click here for information about next year's New River Birding and Nature Festival, to be held 27 April thru 2 May 2026.

Our "Bird of the Day" for 7 May 2024 at Hilton Pond North unquestionably was an adult male Indigo Bunting (INBU, above) we caught during banding operations. We photographed him just as we were releasing him back into the wild.

To our eyes male INBUs are far more than indigo, with several shades of blue on head, wings, and body. This was our first adult male banded locally since starting research in March 2024 here in upper Ashe County NC—although last fall we did catch a BROWN individual that could have been an immature male or a female of any age. Yes, we said brown because only adult males show those extensive blue hues. Curiously, they, too, molt into drab brown plumage on their wintering grounds!

Indigo Buntings breed commonly in every North Carolina county—including the Mountain Region where they have been found nesting as high as 5,500'. Males sing from a tall perch, while females nest close to the ground in shrub or fern. The female builds a hidden nest, incubates eggs, and raises nestlings with no help from her mate.

Although INBU aren't in danger of extinction—they have an estimated population of 78 million—their numbers are declining due primarily to: 1) conversion of brushy fields and forest edges into urban or agricultural areas; 2) migration hazards (including windows, buildings and towers); and, 3) predation by free-roaming and feral cats that have easy access to low-lying nests.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, and text © Hilton Pond North

Other than providing copious year-round helpings of bird seed—plus seasonal sugar water for hummingbirds—we're careful to minimize activities that would bring bears. We store all trash in our cabin's mudroom, don't have an outdoor grill, and even bought a highly efficient GEME indoor composting machine (above) that handles what little food waste we produce AND makes finely ground, no-mess compost for the garden. (It's an amazing device. Although expensive, we recommend it even for homeowners who DON'T have bear raids. As a plus, GEME machines keep food waste out of garbage disposals and landfills.) And we certainly don't put out stale donuts or other treats to intentionally attract bears like a woman we know over in Jackson County! Despite our cautions, this spring we had several documented bear encounters here at Hilton Pond North.

Until recently we'd still never actually SEEN a Black Bear, even though this month security and trail cams provided multiple images revealing bear presence. Plus, again this year equipment was damaged by bears that don't seem to know the difference between mist nets and hummingbird feeders.

All photos, videos, maps, charts, and text © Hilton Pond North

As in 2024, recorded bear visits started this year while we were out-of-town. On 2 May while at a West Virginia birding and nature festival we viewed a Blink recording of a bear patrolling the parking area in front of our cabin (above). Click to start videos if needed.

Then on 10 May we were gone again for a high school reunion in South Carolina when a bear put in the first daytime appearance of the year (above). Thanks to all these cameras, from far-away places we could watch bear(s) via Blink's iPhone app—but we couldn't do a thing about any of it. Oddly enough, it's almost as if the bear(s) always knew when we were gone!

The next night we got Blink footage from a different camera of a bear walking away from the bird feeding area with a loaded suet cage in its mouth. Hard to tell, but it looked like these videos were the same bear—possibly a "smaller" second year individual that had begun putting on some heft.

Although it's difficult to to see, a video snippet from that same night shows a much smaller bear—apparently this year's cub—searching for bird seed in the grass. (Look for the black smudge just to the left of the hummingbird trap at center.)

Even without various video clips depicting bear presence at Hilton Pond North, there were was always plenty of circumstantial evidence when we returned from our trips. Among the most astounding were a few large deposits of fecal matter scattered about the property—dung piles much too big for a Raccoon or Opossum. The one above, with pruning shears for scale, was especially remarkable because it appeared to be made up almost entirely of black oil sunflower seeds—unchewed, swallowed whole, and expelled undigested. This bear was raiding our feeders and depleting our seed supply with nothing to show for it but voluminous scat!

Losing large quantities of sunflower seed to bears was expensive enough, but the real damage came when rambunctious creatures broke feeders, bent stout feeder stanchions, and damaged several 10' lengths of electrical conduit (above). We string long mist nets between these, unfurling the nets by day to catch birds for banding and rolling them up at night with the conduit in place. Apparently our bears thought there must be a food reward atop these tall poles and bent them earthward, making them useless for their intended purpose. All told this year we've lost about ten lengths of conduit to bears—at nearly ten bucks each. (And then there was one mist net a bear ran through and dragged into the bush even though it was closed. Mark that down as another $150 expense.)

Above are photos of other havoc wreaked by big furry visitors in our absence. Upper left shows feeder hangers and a feeder cam bracket bent out of shape both repairable. Upper right is a large water feature turned over but fixable, we guess because the bears were after some mole or vole tunneling beneath. And there was a feeder pole support knocked over despite being weighed down by heavy concrete blocks.

In 43 years of banding work at our old South Carolina study site it was our custom to leave bird traps, feeders on baffled poles, and tightly rolled mist nets in place 24/7, with no fear they would be damaged by wildlife. Rarely we would lose a mist net or two because a tree fell on them, and sometimes a particularly wily Raccoon would make off with a suet feeder, but leaving everything in place meant we could get to work at the crack of dawn every day. It has become quite apparent our new Hilton Pond North banding site has different challenges.

After this month's bear damage as described, we simply can no longer operate as we once did. At dusk we now bring in all traps and all feeders—both seed and sugar water—hanging them temporarily in the workshop or mud room. We also have to take down our mist nets completely, although to save time we store them overnight in bags still on the conduit poles (above). This means, of course, everything has to be re-deployed next morning as we get back to banding duties. It's a real pain, but it's better than letting bears get the best of us—or letting them deplete our meager research budget any further.

Our one exception for not bringing in everything at night is a large wooden covered platform feeder (above); it's mounted atop a five-foot-tall 4"x4" post armored with a heavy duty cone-shaped metal baffle that effectively deters small climbing mammals such as squirrels, chipmunks, 'coons, and 'possums. As shown above, aggressive bears sometimes left that feeder a little tipsy, so we've had to straighten it several times. We might have known this heavyweight contraption would offer no challenge to a bear.

We recently set up an webcam aimed at the platform feeder in the hope of eventually being able to livestream birds that visit. (Stay tuned for that endeavor.) The cam is not set for motion detection but it's always on and displays an image on our desktop computer monitor. At quarter past midnight on 17 May 2025 we happened to be looking at the monitor (see video above) and noticed two ears and a snout at lower left on the screen. In short order a medium-sized Black Bear came into full view, moved to the platform feeder, and did a two-handed pull-up before sticking its big tongue into whatever seeds were still there from the day before. The bear then dropped to the ground, with only its rounded ears showing at the end of the video.

A few minutes later the same bear made another move on the feeder (video just above), again pulling itself up by the platform base but this time bracing itself against the metal baffle. We were surprised so see the baffle spring back into shape after the bear descended.

The third snippet (above) reveals the bear taking a slightly different approach. It also shows the platform feeder is getting a bit shaky from all these bear gymnastics. Watch closely WITH SOUND TURNED UP and you'll see the bear drop quickly to the ground and scurry away as we flung open our office door and loudly rang a cowbell to startle and scare away this furry moocher. We'd been waiting for this moment with cowbell near at hand for a long time and were quite pleased to see our strategy work. We haven’t seen any bears since then at Hilton Pond North but—to be honest—we doubt that will last.

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POSTCRIPT: In two hours between when we finished writing the above account and got ready to publish it on-line, we had yet another bear visit. We know this because a four-foot-tall sunflower seed feeder on a pole just outside our office disappeared just after dusk before we had time to bring it in. When we're at hone we only use the Blink cameras at night, so we didn't get any video; nonetheless, that a bear stole the heavy feeder seems undeniable. (We still can't find that tube feeder, so the bear may have dragged it some distance into densely vegetated woods around us.)

Once a bear finds a food source it's quite likely to return, sometimes getting bold enough to raid feeders during daylight hours. At this point it appears the only solution to our "bear problem" is to erect electric fencing around the perimeter of the bird feeding and banding area. Preliminary estimates for a solar-powered set-up indicate the system would cost about $1,500, a research expense for which we are not budgeted. For now it appears we'll just have to be more vigilant and keep the old cowbell handy at all times.