Day 9

Well today we had our first inevitable black bear encounter (and second, and third?). This is our story.

So we left the house at 4:30 to get on the site to start birding at 6am. We stopped the jeep on the road and walked about 100 yards up a forested hill to the first bird sampling point. When we came back to the car about 10 minutes later, there was a pretty decent sized male bear in the road ahead. I think we startled him a bit, and he ran a bit, then turned and looked at us. He ended up just sauntering away, deciding that we weren't too menacing.

So what about the second encounter? Well...Lupita and I dropped Chris off at his first sampling point and continued driving down the road. Little did we know a large momma bear and two cubs were right over the slope of the hill where we dropped him off (we literally drove right by them!). Chris said he was nervous about being between the cubs and mother, but it turns out they all took off when they saw him.

And third? Well kinda. Lupita and I drove down the road to our next point, and who do we see? Mr. male bear again munching on some greenery not too far from our first plot. We must have caught him earlier on his trip out of the forest and into the reclaimed mine. They really must like all the vegetation and berries they can find there, and obviously we're likely to run into them since we're there at dawn when they are active. He didn't seem to mind us there though, we got out of the car and were looking at him and obviously making some noise, but he continued eating away. I kept an eye on him while Lupita did the bird survey to make sure he didn't come over and surprise us!

So today was bear day (although we did see alot of birds too!). Tomorrow will be our first day off since we've been down here. Not sure what I'll end up doing, hopefully something fun and also getting some much needed sleep.

I did get some pics of the bear for those of you who are wondering! I am working on setting up the high speed internet, then hopefully I can post them!