Get Bear Smart Society - Feeding Habits

Black Bears:

When black bears emerge from their dens in spring, they are often found foraging on sunny, south-facing slopes where they find overwintered bear-berries or scavenge for winter-killed deer and moose. The first green grasses and sedges often sprout right at the edges of streams or in open wetland meadows making these areas attractive, as well. Because food is relatively scarce during spring, bears continue to loose weight until well into June.

In summer, black bears search for pockets of greenery in wet meadows along creeks and rivers, on avalanche slopes, in aspen forests and along marsh edges. As summer progresses, they spend a significant amount of time grubbing ants and beetle larvae out of fallen logs. Late in July or early in August, with the first ripening of huckleberries, blueberries, or other berries, black bears devote their attention to exploiting this high-energy food.

Fall is a critical time for black bears, when they enter a state of 'hyperphagia', attempting to pack on the pounds for the long winter sleep. As the berry crop succumbs to the first heavy frost, food supplies begin to dwindle. Bears, particularly coastal bears, feed on spawning fish where these occur in reliable concentrations. Elsewhere, bears turn again to greenery, which often persists near water, and they wander widely looking for gut piles and wounded animals left by hunters.

Black bears retire to their winter dens early in November when snow begins to accumulate, or in coastal areas, when winter rains begin in earnest. During this period, bears do not usually eat or drink. Although some bears have been observed leaving their winter dens and feeding on winter-killed animals.

Grizzly Bears:

Early in April, grizzlies wake from their winter's sleep and venture out of their dens. With most vegetation still covered by a snowy blanket, food is in short supply. Although bears are hungry, most trees and shrubs won't leaf for another month and only the grass at lower elevations has begun to green up.

In spring, grizzlies gravitate to sunn, south-facing slopes or the banks of low-elevation creeks and rivers. There, where snow has melted away and revealed the matted down brown of last year's grasses, their sensitive noses sniff out sweet-vetch roots, glacier lily bulbs and other buried treasures. The bears' long claws efficiently uproot the starch-rich foods.

Coastal grizzlies find a milder reception, especially along low-elevation river valleys. They feed on the roots of skunk cabbage and sedges, or where they can find them, the well-cured carcasses of salmon that died the previous fall after spawning.

All the time, the grizzlies' noses test the mountain breeze for the promise of heartier fare. Late winter is a time of death for deer, elk, bighorn sheep and other animals. Some die in spring avalanches; others melt out of snowdrifts where the winter buried them. For a hungry grizzly, roots are fine carrion is a jackpot.

The snowpack diminishes and the days lengthen. New greenery begins to sprout. The bears continue to dig roots and bulbs around the shrinking snowdrifts, but now they begin to add highly nutritious young grass, horsetails and other sprouting vegetation to their diet.

By late May, the bears have given up glacier lilies, sweetvetch and other roots and bulbs whose store of starch has gone into producing new stems, leaves and flowers. A lush variety of new greenery now surrounds the grizzlies. Life is one endless salad interrupted by the occasional duck nest or other unexpected side dish.

Source: Bears: An Altitude SuperGuide by Kevin Van Tighem