Some of my friends know that I have become interested in black bears. It all began when my nephew Mike posted something on Facebook about a bear cam in Ely, MN. Out of curiosity I had to check it out and learned the following:
Lily is a 3-year-old black bear denning near Ely, Minnesota. Producer Doug Hajicek and bear researcher Lynn Rogers installed the LIVE cam in her den so the public could share in the birth and care of her cub. This is the first time a live birth of a wild black bear has been viewed live on the internet. Lily the Black Bear is part of a long-term research project run by the North American Bear Center (http://bear.org) and the Wildlife Research Institute (http://bearstudy.org) out of Ely, Minnesota.
Links to LIVE den cam:
http://www.wildearth.tv/static/wildearth/channels/we_bear_den.htmlhttp://www.pixcontroller.com/WebCam/BearDenWebCam.htm
When I first tuned in all you could see was Lily's back facing the camera. Not terribly exciting. After reading some of the notes on her I learned that Lily was hibernating and they thought she was pregnant and due to give birth sometime in the middle of January. Now that makes it a little more interesting. I started checking on her occasionally but usually all you could see was her back facing the opening of the den.
By mid January Lily had thousands of fans on Facebook. At times when I was checking on her there were 3-4000 people watching her at the same time. She now has almost 90,000 Facebook fans. Her followers would post updates on her actions so it was easy to keep up on her even if you were not able to watch all the time. Finally on January 22 Lily went into labor and delivered one cub.
Video of the birth can be seen at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBNtANbW5vE
At times you could hear Lily and the cub but you still couldn't see much more than Lily's back. Once in a while you could catch a glimpse of a paw. As the weather warmed and became more springish, Lily became more active. She could be seen cleaning her den and sometimes would even leave the den, finally exposing the little cub that had been named Hope. Hope is a little ball of fur that squeals a lot and seems to want to eat all of the time.
On March 17 the below pictures were taken by researcher Lynn Rogers during a visit to the den. Soon Lily will leave her den so if you would like to get a look at Lily and Hope yourself, go to http://www.wildearth.tv and click on the bear den cam in the top row.
