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Now is a busy time for the bears – they must eat as much as possible in order to store fat for the coming hibernation. At the Alutaguse bear hide  his autumn has been unusually eventful. Some nature friends believethat they have seen up to 11 different bears in one night at the observation ground.

So which bears visit the hide’s "front yard"?

A nearly every-night visitor is a female bear with four cubs. I was sitting in the hide some days ago with Austrian nature friends and this evening the bear family arrived already at 18.37. The weather was clear and visibility excellent. When guiding groups I don’t carry a camera with me, so I have no photos from that night. But I am nearly 100% certain that we have to do with the same female bear, that was photographed some years ago by Arne Ader. Exactly the same smooth head, nose and body shape. It fits as regards time schedule too: if the female had a mating period in 2009, then she spent 2010 with her cubs. In 2011 there was a new heat period and mating, in that case new cubs with whom she now showed herself should have been born in the winter of 2012.

 

 

Some confusion has been caused by the different sizes of the cubs. Indeed one cub is bigger, the two middle ones similar and one clearly smaller than the others. But evidently we have still not to do with different litters because the difference is not so big. The difference in size can be due to sex, heredity, competition ... female cubs are smaller than the male, and evidently the biggest in our family is a boy and the smallest a girl. The female bears can mate with several males and the fathers of the cubs may be different, that may cause the difference in size. Between four cubs the competition is quite sharp for the mother’s teats and other food – this too can lead to  different sizes of the bear cubs.

Before the female usually a young male arrives who obviously avoids the „bear mum“. Probably we have not to do with the owner of the territory and so he feels insecure. On the whole they manage to coordinate their doings nicely and one evening they were in the web camera view at the same time.

 

 

A very big male has also been seen this autumn from the hide. Evidently Sven or Trulla – or both – come to visit from time to time. Apart from these a bear pair was noticed one night; one bear was a little bigger than the other. A female bear with three cubs is puzzling; she has only been seen in the dark and so it can’t be said for certain whether we have to do with the family described above where one cub happened to stay out of sight at the moment or is the site actually visited by two different female bears.