Bear Balances on Beam, Has Lunch on Nashua Deck

Tom Pratt captured this bear balancing act on his deck in the north/west area of Nashua on Monday. He said there were three bears helping themselves to lunch, and that it is the third sighting in the past few weeks.

As entertaining as bears hanging off the back deck can be, New Hampshire Fish & Game wardens remind everyone that hungry bears will find your bird feeders, so make sure you don't hang them out between April 1 and December 1.

Fish and Game like to share this 32-second compilation video  at http://youtu.be/aJ-_nDnQJ_w, to reinforce the fact that bears are always on the hunt for bird feeder goods.

In 2012 there were a record number of reports lodged against backyard bears – a total of over 1,100 statewide complaints, according to Fish and Game Bear Biologist Andrew Timmins.

This was predominately due to the fact that most natural bear foods were completely absent during spring and summer.  Drought conditions in 2012, coupled with blossom-killing frost in May, led to poor fruit crops.  Fall production of acorns and beechnuts was not much better.

The N.H. Fish and Game Department has spent the past 20 years working to increase public awareness to the fact that bears are readily attracted to backyard human-related food sources.  Despite that fact, nearly 10 percent of the bear complaints last year involved bears at bird feeders.  

In addition, approximately 40 percent of the complaints were the direct result of bears raiding unsecured garbage at homes and businesses.  These two common food attractants accounted for half of the total bear-human conflicts in New Hampshire during 2012. 

"About half of the annual complaints last year could have easily been avoided by removing birdfeeders for the spring and summer season and securing garbage," said Timmins.  "Remove these two common attractants and do your part to minimize conflicts."