Yesterday, Herb and I visited the bear tree. I had last checked my camera traps there 11 days earlier, on July 2nd and there was evidence that bears had visited the tree on several occasions. Interestingly, all of the bears were small ones, probably one and one-half-year-olds. It is breeding season for black bears and although these young bears are old enough to breed, they have little opportunity when there are several large, mature males in the area.

Benjamin Kilham, whose two books on bear behaviour I have, says that during the breeding season, small male bears may actually be afraid to leave their scent messages where they may be found by the large males, afraid that they may be hunted down and killed. Comparing the pictures, I saw that in the last 11 days three different small bears had visited the bear tree area, but only one of these, the one pictured above, dared to leave his (or her) scent. One of the three just passed by on the trail, one sniffed at the tree then turned away but this little bear, the one pictured above, climbed the tree to get up to the level marked by the largest male bears. But when he (or she) left, it was in a hurry!

 Pictures of a cow moose appeared on three of my cameras in the area, recorded over a period of three days. At this season, I expected to see a calf with her but the one smaller moose that had also visited the area appeared to be too large to be a calf born this year, probably a year and a half old. One of the cameras had recorded two blurry pictures of this animal passing the bear tree at full gallop, as if fleeing from some predator.

The next two pictures stored on that camera, taken some six hours later, showed three coyotes that seemed to be following the young moose's trail.

On several recent visits to this area, I have not seen any deer. Today, however, while driving, we came upon two mule deer, one a mature doe, seen twice--


---once on our way into the area and again when we were leaving, when she just lay there, chewing her cud. The other deer was a yearling.