On Wednesday, June 8th, our good friend Henry Tabel arrived. High on his list of things to do was a visit to the bear tree, so that afternoon, we went out to that area south of Peachland Creek, to see what my camera "traps" had caught. The evidence is in the attached video and pictures. 

A large black bear had visited this special bear tree, reaching as high as possible into the branches to read the scent messages of other bears and leave some of his own.

 This picture and the next are frame grabs from the video.

Henry as he strode purposefully past the tree, unaware that one of the cameras was still active.

A camera placed on a trail that leads to the area had recorded the passage of a young buck whitetail deer. We have both mule deer and whitetails in this area, so how do I know this is a whitetail? A visible identifying mark is the very small skin gland that you can see on the left hind leg, half way down from the hock. The tarsal glands of mule deer are much larger, 3 to 4 inches long. When their antlers are fully grown, the species can be separated by antler conformation; mule deer antlers divide into equal branches, then may fork again to add points. The antlers of whitetails all branch off a main stem.

An added note: on June 8th Martha saw a flying insect in our living room, apparently having entered by the door to the patio. It disappeared before it could be captured but the next day, it was on the window and we captured it and I put it into a vial and later took photos. I have searched E Fauna without finding an exact match for it but it does seem to be a crane fly. Hopefully, E Fauna can give me an identification.