Bear Spirit Names

In many cultures, the bear was looked upon with such reverence that members of the culture were not allowed to speak the word for "bear ". Instead, they referred to the animal with varied and creative euphemisms. These euphemisms are related here. The general catagory refers to names that were wide-spread through several native American groups. Many cultures found a spiritual kinship with the bears, and speaking the name of the animal would bring swift retribution from the gods.

• Famous Lightfoot (Finn)
• Fine Young Chief (Navajo)
• Food of the Fire (Cree)
• Golden Friend (Finn)
• Golden King (nA)
• Gold Friend of Fen and Forest (Ural Altaic)
• Good-tempered Beast (Cree)
• Great Man (Siberian)

Fun Bird Facts

1. To attract a mate, a male Frigate bird will blow up its red throat pouch. The pouch can be as big as a person’s head.
2. Over time, a surprising number of birds have lost their ability to fly. Being flightless has several advantages. For example, a flightless bird doesn’t need to develop and carry large flight muscles or burn up the energy that flying requires. A flightless bird can also get by with less food, which means it can survive in places where food is scarce.
3. Depending on the species, a woodpecker’s tongue can be up to 4" long. It stores this long tongue by curling it in and sticking it through a specialized opening at the back of its neck, where it can then put it between the skull and skin.
4. The seagulls in the Alfred Hitchcock movie The Birds (1963) were fed a mixture of wheat and whisky so they would stand around and not fly too much.
5. In the movie The Birds (1963), the scene where actress Tippi Hedren is attacked took a week to shoot. The birds were attached to her clothes by long nylon threads so they could not fly away.

Fox

The red fox is omnivorous. Although it might eat muskrats, squirrels, hares, birds, eggs, insects, vegetation, and carrion, voles seem to be its preferred food. Foxes cache excess food when the hunting is good. They return to these storage sites and have been observed digging up a cache, inspecting it, and reburying it in the same spot. Apparently, they want to be sure that their food is still there.

River Otter

River otters in Alaska hunt on land and in fresh and salt water eating snails, mussels, clams, sea urchins, insects, crabs, shrimp, octopi, frogs, a variety of fish, and occasionally birds, mammals, and vegetable matter. Aquatic organisms no bigger than a man's finger are usually eaten at the surface of the water, while larger food is taken ashore.

If a fish or other animal is too big to be eaten at one meal, the remains are abandoned and become available to other flesh-eating mammals and birds. Scraps left out of the water may be a significant source of food available to some scavengers when snow and ice are present.

Bear Facts

1. Baloo, from The Jungle Book, is a sloth bear.
2. Most bears have 42 teeth, which is about 10 more than people have. A bear’s canines can reach 1.5" long, while a human’s are less than a half inch long.
3. The giant panda has been described as a living fossil because it is such an ancient animal.
4. Polar bears are the largest land predators on earth. They can stand more than 11' high and weigh more than 1,700 lbs.
5. Black bears are typically smaller than grizzly bears, have a smaller shoulder hump, less shaggy fur, longer ears, and a less concave facial profile. Black bear claws are also smaller and more curved to better climb trees. 

Hallo Bay Bears

Ptarmigan

The willow ptarmigan has an appropriate name. Not only are willows important nesting habitat, they are also the bird’s most important food source. The leaves of willow shrubs often outrank any other item eaten in summer. In winter the buds, twigs, and catkins of willows provide four-fifths or more of their food. Because moose and snowshoe hare also rely on willows for sustenance, it is fortunate that these shrubs are so widespread in Alaska, and are able to rapidly recover from severe browsing.
As with the other ptarmigan species, willow ptarmigan feed on berries in the fall and also eat overwintered berries in the spring.

Bald Eagles

The bald eagle’s main diet is fish. Herring, flounder, pollock, and salmon are taken along the coast, while the Interior populations prey heavily upon salmon. Eagles also prey upon waterfowl, small mammals, sea urchins, clams, crabs, and carrion. Bald eagles are sometimes seen swimming, laboriously “rowing” with their wings. Eagles have thick down and float pretty well. It’s a common misconception that eagles cannot let go of their prey: the talons’ grasp is purely voluntary. An eagle will sometimes grab a fish that’s too heavy to lift and will chose to swim, towing the meal to shore, rather than lose it.

Alaska Voles

Red-backed voles are omnivorous and will eat grass, seeds, fruit, lichens, fungi, insects and meat. If a vole is caught in a trap, others will feed upon the trapped vole. Both the Microtus and red-backed voles form the base of the food chain for many animals in Alaska. They are the staple foods of weasels, marten, foxes, coyotes, all owls, most hawks, inland breeding gulls, jaegers, and occasionally great blue herons, domestic cats, northern pike, and other voles.

Black Bear

As with brown bears, black bears spend the winter months in a state of hibernation. Their body temperatures drop, their metabolic rate is reduced, and they sleep for long periods. Bears enter this dormancy period in the fall, after most food items become hard to find. They emerge in the spring when food is again available.

Occasionally, in the more southern ranges, bears will emerge from their dens during winter. In the northern part of their range, bears may be dormant for as long as seven to eight months. Females with cubs usually emerge later than lone bears. Dens may be found from sea level to alpine areas. They may be located in rock cavities, hollow trees, self-made excavations, even on the ground.

Wolves

Wolves run on their toes, which helps them to stop and turn quickly and to prevent their paw pads from wearing down.
Under certain conditions, wolves can hear as far as six miles away in the forest and ten miles on the open tundra.
A wolf pup’s eyes are blue at birth. Their eyes turn yellow by the time they are eight months old.
Wolves have about 200 million scent cells. Humans have only about 5 million. Wolves can smell other animals more than one mile (1.6 kilometers) away.

Sandhill Cranes

Omnivorous ground feeders, cranes eat frogs, rodents, insects, bulbs, seeds, and berries as well as occasional seashore delicacies. They have adapted well to agriculture and during the winter and on migration, feed largely on waste grain and small animals associated with farm fields.
 
The dance of the sandhills may be one of the strangest breeding displays on the tundra. Often called a mating dance, display activity reaches a peak in late winter and early spring, but it has also been seen at other times of the year when two cranes meet. The ritual starts with a deep bow followed by great leaps, hops, skips, turns, and more bows. This dance can go on for many minutes.