A young black bear was found napping in an eagle’s nest on a military base in Alaska by researchers who were conducting a survey to determine if the eagles had succeeded in producing eaglets.
“I’ve never seen a bear in a nest like this over many years of nest surveys and wildlife work in Alaska,” Steve Lewis, a wildlife biologist with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service told The Epoch Times.
On July 17, Mr. Lewis and other fellow researchers were flying over Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson (JBER). Circling this particular nest, they attempted to get a good look in order to count any nestlings. When Mr. Lewis spotted a dark shape, he thought it was a baby eagle lying on its stomach with its wings spread. However, when he realized it was a black bear, he laughed at the sight.
“The bear looked just like a dog lying on its bed,“ he said. ”It raised its head up to look at the helicopter before setting it back down ... just as I’ve seen my dog do many times.”
After surveying about 20 nests that day, Mr. Lewis said this was the only nest with a bear in it.
Mr. Lewis believes that in the past there have been bear invasions that have caused eagles’ nests to fail however this time he says it was different.
“That nest was occupied when we first saw it in the spring,” he said, adding that there was a female incubating on the nest, but when the team returned a week later, both adults were near the nest but not in it. There had been an egg in the nest but it wasn’t clear if the nesting attempt had failed or if the female was simply taking a break from incubating.
“Usually, when she takes a break, the male will incubate; especially in a relatively cool place like Alaska,” Mr. Lewis said. “So I suspected it had failed in the spring, long before the flight where we photographed the bear.”
At approximately 6.5 to 8.2 feet (2 to 2.5 meters) across and about 3.2 feet (1 meter) in depth, the nest certainly made a comfortable spot for the bear to take a nap.
Bears will make “beds” on the ground, said the wildlife expert, often on very steep slopes where they can’t easily be approached, and the nest doesn’t seem far off from such a bed. The young bear may also have been drawn by food remains.
“There are times that eagles will use their nests as platforms to pluck and eat prey, even if there are no nestlings in the nest,” Mr. Lewis said. “So it could be that there was food remains up there that drew the bear.”
Another possibility is that when eagles are provisioning their young ones, their nest becomes rather smelly.
“The adults bring fish (often salmon here) to the nest,” Mr. Lewis said. “Once the young are older (by July or so), the adults often will leave the food for the young to eat on their own.”
When the food isn’t entirely consumed, it ends up getting stomped into the nest or laying on the side rotting. Since bears have an incredible sense of smell, perhaps the bear is attracted to a smelly nest.
JBER is home to larger brown bears, too. Since it’s impossible to constantly monitor the area with cameras or in person, it’s hard to gauge how often bears invade eagle nests.
Still unclear as to what the bear was doing in the eagle’s nest that day, Mr. Lewis, who has approached nests himself to install nest cameras and band chicks, said it’s not clear how defensive they would be towards a bear.
“The adults did not attack me but just flew around calling or sitting nearby and watching. But often behavior to humans is different than to other species,“ he said. ”So they may be aggressive to bears.”
