Photos and text copyright Romping and Rolling in the Rockies 2009-2017.

All photographs and text within this blog are copyrighted.

You may not copy or repost any photos or text without specific permission from the author of this blog. When in doubt, please ask.

Sunday, May 29, 2016

Milton the Black Bear Returns for 2016!

While we relaxed in the desert, about 4 different black bears showed up on my trail cameras. Today, I want to share just the footage of "Milton", a long-lived and big male black bear who I've watched for years.

In the spring of 2013, he badly injured himself, and I feared that we'd never see him again. I was wrong. He disappeared for a while. He played very little role in the 2014 mating season - he didn't appear marking trees on Black Bear Trail. However, last year, he returned, looking stronger than ever!

The first glimpse of him this year was marking a tree on Black Bear Trail several miles from our house. He is a big and strong bear!

In the next couple of hours, he walked the miles to our house and showed up to work on how to pull down our bear-proof birdfeeders. I had a trail camera that shoots video pointed at the birdfeeding station that caught all his antics. You can watch the video here or at Youtube.


He didn't gain anything from all that effort. In fact, there was no food hanging up high on the feeding station. However, he did leave the pole leaning rather obviously in one direction. I think that the bird feeding station's inventor, the Runner, won this round but I also think that Milton is getting closer to a solution! The battle goes on!

None of the bears photographed by my trail cams have been the sow and cubs from the den yet. To make absolutely sure that I don't upset that bear family, I'm waiting a little longer before I go get the memory cards from the cams at their den.

While Milton worked on our birdfeeding station, we were oblivious because we were in the desert. Normally, we would've been out chasing a bear away after the dogs started barking at him. Instead, we were enjoying this quiet faraway campsite...
There were no bears at this campsite although lizards skittered around all the rocks!

16 comments:

  1. Milton is looking great.
    Blessings,
    Buddy

    ReplyDelete
  2. Milton IS a big boy!!! And you can just see the wheels turning in his head as he plots his next move. We are so happy to see he is so well.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Boy, Milton is persistent!! What a great video, thanks so much for sharing!!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Look how handsome Milton is!!
    love
    tweedles

    ReplyDelete
  5. Milton is certainly persistent! Bummer that his payoff was zero.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Wow! Milton is a BIG and strong bear! He is also a very smart bear...too bad his efforts were not rewarded. LOL

    ReplyDelete
  7. We're glad to see that Milton is doing well these days!

    ReplyDelete
  8. He looked rather determined. I suppose he'll be back for another try.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "next time I'll get it" he says. What a magnificent fellow. And the vastness of the desert, this time of the year seems to be so beautiful there.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Love watching Milton 'think' how to approach the birdfood problem.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Amazing!! Cocoa is a bear hunter so I am not sure what would happen if we saw a bear!!

    ReplyDelete
  12. Good thing Shyla and R are home to protect the bird feeder from certain destruction!!

    -Otto

    ReplyDelete
  13. I am pretty sure that is Smokey
    Snorts
    Lily & Edward

    ReplyDelete
  14. Oh Milton,, you are sooo handsome!
    love
    tweedles

    ReplyDelete
  15. Crikey, that is a mighty big bear, KB! I don't know that I've ever seen one that size here.

    ReplyDelete

If you are a Blogger registered user, you can skip the step asking you to verify that you are not a spammer. For posts older than 5 days, I have comment moderation turned on.

Thanks for your comments!!!!!