This Black Bear Just Can’t Quit Us: The Birdfeeder Marauder Returns

The bear is back.

Her return in March has become as predictable as Daylight Saving Time, the Spring Equinox and green beer. This full-grown black bear arrives unannounced to pillage our backyard bird feeder and feast on the black oil sunflower seeds and, in the case of her return the other day, an added bonus of dried cranberries that we had sprinkled into the mix only hours earlier.

There you go, another shattered bird feeder headed for the landfill after getting the bear treatment!

As much as I lament the waste of metal and glass, I delight in 162's visits. That's the number on her ear jewelry, which is the green tag affixed by wildlife officials who tell me she's about 6 years old and likes to frequent the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains in Altadena and La Cañada Flintridge.

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If 162 has another name, she hasn't shared it with me. Instead of giving her one myself, like "Meatball" or "French Fry'' (actual local bears), I prefer to allow her the dignity of keeping her identity cloaked in the enigmatic three digits assigned when she was first captured in suburbia before being tagged and whisked off into the Angeles National Forest — the first of three times.

According to some publicity she received in 2021, she first turned up in springtime at a preschool in Altadena. "The California Department of Fish and Wildlife responded and deemed the female bear not aggressive and, in fact, wasn't really causing any problems," the Crescenta Valley Weekly reported. The wildlife biologists gave up trying to convince her to stay in her mountain habitat, as she had been fed by humans and, no surprise here, liked it.

Black bear 162, caught in the act, barely notices her audience of East Coast college students in March 2023.

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Susanne Whatley

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LAist

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This brings me to the birdfeeder(s). The last one to bite the dust at the claws and jaws of 162 was during a visit I summoned in March of last year, when my daughter and five girlfriends visiting from their Pennsylvania college were treated to a command performance by this gentle marauder. Mere hours after I'd admonished them to watch out for wildlife in the yard, including bears (boy did their eyes go wide at that notion), 162 paid an afternoon visit to the feeder. As she tore it to the ground and chomped away, these East Coast ladies marveled at the show. Out came the phones to chronicle it on video as living proof of how their California friend lives on the razor's edge, at danger's very door.

Our first bird feeder fell victim in October of 2021, at a time of year when black bears like to fatten up before their winter torpor. This untagged individual surprised me while I was broadcasting live from home during LAist 89.3's Morning Edition. Seconds before going on the air, I turned to see it through the window about 15 feet away as it mauled the feeder and chowed down on the contents. A social media-savvy colleague turned this encounter into a viral moment: This fall and next spring, I’ll make sure to put the bird feeding on hiatus.

Interesting how I could live some place my whole life and only recently experience the joy and wonderment of a close encounter with such a massive beast as Ursus americanus. But bear sightings are becoming more common because there are more bears. The US Forest Service notes on its San Bernardino website that "Black bears are being observed in areas where they were not seen 50 years ago along the Central Coast and Transverse mountain ranges of Southern California. Between 25,000 and 30,000 black bears are now estimated to occupy 52,000 square miles in California."

The black bear is also a game mammal. The California Department of Fish and Wildlife issues "bear tags" to allow the bruins to be hunted in the counties of Los Angeles, Ventura, San Bernardino and Riverside. Its Bear Management Program collects teeth from killed bears to determine their ages by counting the rings. I prefer not to think of such things.

162 may be huge with claws that could shred skin and sinew, but in my experience she is not scrapping for a fight. We've seen her (or her kind) sleep on our lawn, climb our fences, upend our trash can and terrorize our cat, but she acts without malice. Clapping and shouting "shoo, bear!" appears to be all it takes to send her on her way to surprise — and hopefully delight — someone else.