Yesterday, my friend Paul accompanied me to the "bear tree" south of Peachland Creek. This is my third year of watching the great interest that bears take in this little, to us, insignificant little tree. Apparently, to the bears,  it serves a very important means of communication. Bears young and old, male and female, visit this tree to leave their scent and visual messages. This picture shows a large male bear just leaving the tree.

Other animals pass by on the trail but for them, the tree is of little, if any interest.

One or more trail cameras monitored weekly for the past two years, during the period May 1 to December 31st, have almost always shown visits by bears. Last week was no exception. Three different bears had visited during the period June 8th to the 15th.

Typically, each bear spends a few moments examining the tree for scents and marks (the little tree has suffered bite and claw marks, broken branches and its top bitten off) then he give the tree a full body rub before continuing along the trail.

Click the arrow to play a video.

The day following his appearance at the bear tree, this big reddish-brown male bear was "captured" by a camera placed on the trail several hundred metres away. It seems that he had spent most of the week in the area.