From dress color photo to bear or badger video
Resident sets up camera to view wildlife, says surprised at findings
LOS GATOS — One of the things British transplant Maurice Baker, 64, looked forward to when he joined his wife in California was the opportunity to see wildlife up close. He just never expected the up close to be in his own back yard.
On April 28, Baker’s camera caught what he believes is an American black bear walking through his Los Gatos back yard.
“I just really love that we’re so close to a forest,” Baker said. “So I just got this cheap camera and set it up to see what I could see. I never expected to see a bear here.”
Six weeks ago, Baker— who focuses on raising his 9-year-old daughter while his wife works on contract with Apple — decided to set up a camera to capture the wildlife outside their Los Gatos rental, situated in Fairview Plaza up against the hills of the El Sereno Preserve. Baker said he’d already witnessed bobcats, raccoons and coyotes in the area.
Hailing from Addlestone, England, about 20 miles south of London, Baker said he has no experience studying wildlife save for “the time I used to spend admiring the birds at home in England.”
He set up the camera to capture footage of animals to show his daughter.
“It was Friday about 8:30 p.m. when the animal walked through my camera angle,” Baker said.
“That’s definitely a bear,” said Andrew Hughan, public information officer for the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s Region 3, which includes Santa Clara County.
“There are about 30,000 black bears in California, and though we don’t keep specific numbers per region, bears live in every part of our state,” Hughan added.
After viewing the video, Hughan said by phone that the bear looked to be “2 to 3 years old, about 100 pounds with a healthy coat.” He estimated that the winter rains attracted the bear to the grassier hills.
But Kirk Lenington, a natural resource department manager for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, disagrees. “It’s a badger,” he said.
“American badgers are fossorial and nocturnal, so the likelihood of living near them and never seeing them is very high,” Lenington explained by phone after watching the video.
He reached his conclusion by comparing the size of the animal to the fence seen in the video.
“And at one point, for a second, you can actually see the animal’s profile,” added Lenington. “Badgers have a pointy snout, while bears don’t. It’s either a badger or a raccoon that lost its tail.”
Fossorial animals live underground, and nocturnal animals only come out at night.
“Badgers eat ground squirrels, and while they aren’t known for attacking people, they are known for doing some amazingly ferocious things to their prey,” Lenington said.
“Well, I’ve never seen an American badger so that never occurred to me,” said Baker when informed of the two different opinions. “I’ve got to look that up now.”
Baker added that his wife has shared the video with her Apple colleagues, who have assured her that bears are not common in these parts.
Chris Wilmers, associate professor of environmental studies at UC Santa Cruz, watched the video and said by email, “I am definitely not sure, but my best guess would be a bear.”
Lenington said, “We were expecting black bears from the hills of Monterey to migrate back this way in about two years, so perhaps this one is just ahead of schedule.”
Hughan added there are no known fatal black bear attacks in history, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t an animal to avoid.
“Black bears are generally afraid of their own shadow, but they also eat a wide variety of things,” Hughan said. “Basically, anything they can get their paws on.”
He advised locals to cover trash cans, clean barbecue grills and turn to their “Keep Me Wild” campaign materials for ways to avoid a bear confrontation. Visit wildlife.ca.gov/ Keep-Me-Wild/Bear for full details. To view the video, visit this story online at mercurynews.com.