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Eating
By Lauretta Young

Getting enough high quality food is the basis of life. On a recent trip to Homer, Alaska I was impressed with how many ways there are to define what quality food is, and how to obtain it in the animal world.

We went on our second bear-viewing trip in the Katmai National Park system with a fly-in company from Homer that has been taking people to observe Alaska Brown Bears for many years. The last time we were there, a couple of years ago in June, we watched with great interest how the bears “acted like cows” and ate volumes of sedge grasses. They have to eat for 16 hours a day to gain weight given the relatively low density of the calories in that food. So they spend most of the day munching away.

This year we went in late July when the salmon start running up the coastal rivers in the Katmai. At low tide we watched as the bears used their powerful paws to scoop up huge amounts of sand to find Razor Clams. Their olfactory sense is so developed they simply smell where the clams are. I have to rely on my eyes when I dig clams!

The bears eat the entire clam. We found shreds of shell in their piles of scat. When the tide comes in the bears switch to their all time favorite food—salmon. They scoop them up out of the water and crunch down—no filet work here. They only need to catch a “few” salmon a day to equal the calories in 16 hours of grass eating. So the rest of the time they nap in the sun, play with sticks or enjoy the view.

The cubs are not able to catch fish until around two years old. They drink milk from their mothers for the first year and then eat what she eats, as she teaches them to hunt and scavenge, the second and third years. It was fascinating to see the mother of a yearling catch salmon and eat it herself first and make the youngster steal his portion. I realized that these bears need to be “aggressive” and motivated for food—she didn’t hand it to him first, she made him do some work for it. Humans aren’t bears, of course, but it makes me wonder if human parents could take a lesson from these mothers, teaching their youngsters they won’t have everything just handed to them with no effort.

While in Alaska, my husband and I joke that we once again “see” the birds that migrated through our Cedar Mill yards in the spring. We did in fact see innumerable juvenile birds, born up north such as Yellow Rumped Warblers, Golden Crowned Sparrows and other warblers—as well as their parents who pass through Cedar Mill on their way north to breed. The food in the Homer area is abundant for the birds as well—scores of insects, including the ever-present mosquitoes, but also ripe berries for the berry eaters—Devil’s Club berries, blueberries, currants, watermelon berries, salmonberries. In fact there are over 40 kinds of wild berries in Alaska—many of which are abundantly ripe now, providing the food the juveniles need to gain weight to fly back south.

The long daylight hours allow all of these animals to eat and eat—gaining fat to survive either the long winter hibernation (bears) or the long trip back south for the birds. We “feasted” on the buffet of wildlife viewings and delighted in their passion for life as exhibited by their enjoyment of the abundant food. Soon we’ll be seeing those same birds either come to stay in our yards for the winter or pass through on their way to their wintering grounds further south.

Get outside and pick the berries in our neighborhoods for your feasting—the blackberries are ripe in our waysides. Enjoy the light. What birds and other critters can you see and hear?

Lauretta Young MD is the chief medical officer of Health Republic Insurance and the Director of the OHSU medical student resiliency program. She also takes people on customized bird watching tours in Cedar Mill and beyond—see her website at portlandbirdwatching.com. You can see more Alaska and other pictures on her husband’s photography web site: flickr.com/photos/youngbirders.

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