Black bear natural history

What do bears eat?
A bear's year
Bear tracks and scat
Denning and reproduction
Home range sizes
Other links

What natural foods are available for bears in the Adirondacks?

When bears are not denning they spend most of their lives searching for food. In the Adirondacks black bears typically feed on the seasonal natural foods that are most abundant and nutritious. These foods may differ from location to location, but they generally consist of grasses, berries, and nuts, as well as other vegetation sources that vary seasonally.  From 80% to 90% of an Adirondack black bear’s annual diet consists of vegetation, although they will prey on small or injured animals including deer fawns, road-killed animals and insects.

By learning to identify some of these bear foods and signs that bears leave, you can have a more interesting trip into the backcountry and may be able to avoid areas where bears are most active.

A bear's year

By early to mid April bears will emerge from their dens and begin anew their annual search for food. Early, succulent spring plants such as marsh marigold help bears to re-hydrate their systems. Quick growing, tender plants have more digestible proteins, carbohydrates and vitamins. At this time of year, bears are most likely to seek out tender grasses, sedges and roots that are found in open, often wetland areas and where snows melt away first.

During the summer they feed on various plants, fruits, berries and insects throughout the forest and in forest clearings. 



During late summer and fall bears forage in hardwood forests for fruits and nuts, especially wild cherries, acorns and beech nuts.

By late fall, bears are building up fat stores in anticipation of winter denning.

Bear tracks and scat

Tracks and scat are often the most obvious signs that you will notice of bears on your Adirondack backcountry adventure. Bears tend to follow the easiest travel routes, much as we do, and tracks can often be seen along foot trails, stream edges and lakeshores. Look for front prints that are two to five inches wide, with five toes in a gradual arc in front of a curved pad. Rear tracks are as wide as the front but longer, showing an obvious, elongated heel pad. If you are watchful you might notice claw marks on smooth-barked trees such as American beech, white birch, aspen or spruce. Black bears are excellent climbers and will climb trees for fruits and nuts, to escape danger, to sleep or to pull down improperly hung food sacks.  Look for claw marks on the trees near food storage cables or near campsites where campers have hung food in the past.

Bear scat (droppings) will differ from season to season depending on diet. During spring and early summer scats will be dark and fibrous from a diet of grasses and other vegetation.  When berries begin to ripen, bear scats will soon be full of seeds and often partly digested berries. In the late summer and fall scat may be full of wild cherry seeds and beechnut or acorn hulls. 

Unfortunately, when bears eat poorly stored human foods and trash the result will also be obvious in their droppings. Plastic wrappers, can lids and other packaging can be ingested by bears and seriously affect their health, not to mention contribute to litter in the forest.

Denning and reproduction

Winter denning or hibernation for bears is a response to lack of food availability. With the onset of winter snows bears begin to enter dens in the Adirondacks around mid November. They often enlarge and nestle into cavities under tree roots and log or brush piles in mixed hardwood forests. Caves or rock cavities are less common in the Adirondacks and not used by bears as often. For bedding, bears will drag leaves, twigs, wood chips, bark or other organic material into the sleeping area. Hibernation for bears is not the same as it is for rodents and some other animals. Their body temperature drops only a few degrees below normal while their metabolic rate is cut in half. They do not defecate or urinate while in the den and cellular metabolic wastes are recycled into proteins to maintain their body condition. They can also awaken very quickly if danger threatens and occasionally will emerge from their dens during warm spells for a look around.

Pregnant females normally give birth to one to three cubs in January or early February while still in the den. Their gestation period is roughly three months although their courtship and breeding season is during June and July. In bears the fertilized egg begins to divide after mating but stops at the blastocyst stage, as a small cluster of cells, which does not implant on the uterus wall immediately. Delayed implantation of the fertilized egg allows a female bear to reabsorb the blastocyst if she is in poor physical condition, possibly helping her to survive a hard winter if she has low fat reserves. 

The cubs will remain with their mother, learning about food sources and survival, during the first spring, summer, and fall and will den with her during that first winter. By the following June, when the cubs are just over one year old, the mother bear (sow) usually drives her cubs away when breeding season arrives. Large male bears (boars) can be very aggressive towards and do occasionally kill cubs. Young female bears generally find a new home territory near their mother while young males typically disperse and try to find a new, unoccupied territory to call their own.  Males' home range sizes typically are about 100 square miles and females' are 25-50 square miles. 

More BBEAR Resources  

Go to:

BBEAR BBEAR home
Black Learn about black bear natural history (back to top)
Bear Learn about black bear encounters and safety
Education Find out more about the causes of human - bear conflict
Awareness Ways you can be part of the solution
Research Learn more about WCS' ressearch efforts on bears

Go straight to information about bear-resistant food canisters or locations where you can rent canisters.

Other resources:

The Department of Environmental Conservation maintains black bear web pages.

NYS DEC's pdf report:  Black Bears in New York: Natural History, Range, and Interactions with People