Friday, June 07, 2013

Seen This Week

Tuesday, we hiked to the Osborn Homestead here in Mueller. In 1915, Earl Nealy Osborn built his home on this land and lived there with his family until the mid-1920s. At that point, they moved into nearby Divide so the children could attend school more regularly. The cabin is in really rough condition, but it was interesting to look at the homestead. They raised cattle and grew potatoes.



John took some interesting photos of the cabin construction. It looks like all the work was done by hand, without benefit of electric saws. The interior had been covered with cardboard. The family did have glass windows.



I found a dark-eyed junco that was building its nest.



We also saw an evening grosbeak.



However, the highlight of the week was a black bear. Thursday, we were driving our mule along the main park road when we saw Rich and Penny taking pictures down the hill. We stopped to see what was so exciting and saw this bear. The photo was taken with my phone and it isn't really great.



Rich had a much better camera and emailed me copies of his photos. Isn't this a good looking bear? We loved sighting this type of wildlife.

3 comments:

  1. Wow, a real live bear. I have never seen one in person. If I even do though I hope it's from a distance!

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  2. Beautiful photos of what seems to be a great hike!

    As for the bear, it looks young and I'll bet it's mama was nearby!

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  3. We have lots of bears around here. They are shy and harmless if left alone. There are hundreds of thousands of human/bear encounter every year. Occasionally there is an aggressive one.
    You might find this personal account of an encounter with an aggressive bear. Luckily the biologist was an experienced outdoors man who understood about black bears. He did everything right. It was a dangerous time. A less experience person would have had a fatal outcome. http://www.cbc.ca/pointsnorth/episodes/2013/06/11/thunder-bay-man-survives-a-bear-attack-in-the-northeast/#.UbeXnICVxd4.twitter

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