Set 02 of My Animal Pictures:  Pictures of a Bear Tearing Down Our Hummingbird Feeder
Bob Jensen at Trinity University 

My photographer friend Wes Lavin stopped by the cottage this month and took some
special pictures. Below is a sampling of the shots that I will feature in a future edition
of Tidbits later this summer. Wes is a much better photographer than me.
This shot was taken from our front law behind the row of wild roses.
The Mountains in the back ground are mostly the Kinsman Range mountains.
The Twin Range and Presidential Range mountains were clouded over when he took this shot.

Sometimes our living room is above the clouds hanging over the valley below
It often appears in photographs that we are beside a lake

Some days the clouds are puffier (si that a word?)

A winter sunset about 4:00 p.m.

I don't want to give the impression that our bears in New England are dangerous. Firstly, they are
black bears that are less aggressive than their brown bear relatives in the West. Secondly, they can smell
people and dogs in the woods such that hikers up here rarely get within miles of a bear. People injured by
bears are usually confrontational and foolish like a man who jumped bear after it was attacked by his dog.

Bears are usually more of a nuisance than dangerous. As a rule they won't come into your yards when you
are outside. They usually won't come near people or dogs. But there are exceptions such as in the springtime
when bears wake up very hungry. A friend in Easton was raking her lawn when a bear walked up the driveway
and entered her garage through the open door. It then hauled off a garbage bag to the woods. Another friend in
Easton was having Thanksgiving dinner with her visiting family. The children had left some candy in an unlocked car.
They looked out the window and saw the bear inside  the car that managed to open a car door. Every homeowner
seems to have a bear story but not an injury in these mountains. It's such a shame that hunters are allowed to
kill thousands of these gentle creatures up here every year any time of year.

If restaurants put leftover food in dumpsters bears will rip off the metal covers to get at the food. Usually this only
happens late at night, and precautions can be taken by fastening heaving logging chains across the lids. During our first night in
our cottage I naively left a garbage can outdoors. After hearing a noise I switched on our flood lights and saw a bear's butt outside that can.

For most of us the biggest bear nuisance is that we cannot have bird feeders --- bird seed is a favorite delicacy of bears and they
cannot seem to partake without wrecking the feeders.  But for nearly ten years the bears have not bothered our
hummingbird feeder. That changed a few days ago when Erika looked outdoors toward our pond flower garden. There
was a medium-sized bear pulling down our hummingbird feeder before sunset. The feeder hung from a
metal pole. The bear easily broke the lid off the container and lapped up the sugar water.

Our feeder moved over the years. Early on it was on our main deck, but winds tended to blow the feeder and
stain the deck. I then moved it to an arbor beside the pond.

This pictures were taken when our son Marshall visited from Maine.
The hummingbird feeder is hanging from the arbor.

Here's a shot of some old guy beside Erika's roses in 2012
I don't recognize him anymore

In later years  I moved the hummingbird feeder closer to the house where it was easier to refill

Here's the bear that pulled the feeder down in June 2015.

When I was outdoors the next morning the hummingbirds fluttering about my head seemed
to be saying:  "What the heck happened?"
I retrieved the feeder an hung it from the roof of my studio
Now I have to put up a 10-foot stepladder just to refill the feeder. Sigh!

I think Fred is the patriarch of a large family of crows that squawk repeatedly at first light
He paces along our roof by the hour watching for frogs in the pond and moles in the yard
Then he will eat away even if we're standing within a few feet watching him eat
Crows are also  tough on bird eggs and baby birds

 

I throw a couple of handfuls of peanuts daily to friendly chipmunks
But I do it under a deck where Fred cannot take command of the peanuts

I don't have to feed our woodchuck that seems to be happy with what he forages from the lawn

We sometimes hear a fisher cat scream at night, but a sighting is rare

The last time we had a yard sale this female moose was disappointed that
we did not have anything in her size

In the early years we fed birds when the bears were hibernating
But that got out of hand and is probably against Fish and Game rules
Birds are wild creatures that should not depend on humans for daily handouts

Wild turkeys leave our cranberry bushes alone until they are very hungry in the winter
I suspect wild cranberries are not very flavorful

At one time the Iris Farm down the road about a mile had Scottish cows
This is one of my favorite photographs over the years

Forwarded by my friend Jagdish Pathak at the University of Windsor in Canada

The lines of World renowned Poet and also a Nobel laureate, Rabindra Nath Tagore.
 He wrote (copied from Wikipedia English translation of original Bengali poem)

If they answer not to thy call walk alone,
If they are afraid and cower mutely facing the wall,
O thou unlucky one,
open thy mind and speak out alone.

If they turn away, and desert you when crossing the wilderness,
O thou unlucky one,
trample the thorns under thy tread,
and along the blood-lined track travel alone.

If they do not hold up the light when the night is troubled with storm,
O thou unlucky one,
with the thunder flame of pain ignite thy own heart
and let it burn alone.

Bob Jensen's Threads --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm

Bob Jensen's Home Page --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/

On May 14, 2006 I retired from Trinity University after a long and wonderful career as an accounting professor in four universities. I was generously granted "Emeritus" status by the Trustees of Trinity University. My wife and I now live in a cottage in the White Mountains of New Hampshire ---
http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/NHcottage/NHcottage.htm

Bob Jensen's Blogs --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/JensenBlogs.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called New Bookmarks --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookurl.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Tidbits --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/TidbitsDirectory.htm
Current and past editions of my newsletter called Fraud Updates --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/FraudUpdates.htm
Bob Jensen's past presentations and lectures --- http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen/resume.htm#Presentations   

Our address is 190 Sunset Hill Road, Sugar Hill, New Hampshire
Our cottage was known as the Brayton Cottage in the early 1900s
Sunset Hill is a ridge overlooking with New Hampshire's White Mountains to the East
and Vermont's Green Mountains to the West