Carrion

Describing autumn hunting through scenes of newly born calves would move a seasonal opportunity into the wrong part of the year.

Carrion offers a different possibility.

animal tissue becomes available without the feeding bear having to make a kill.

Its arrival is irregular.

You know, if you see a corvid, then in some particular folklore stories, that would be a sign of impending tragedy.

They've got this kind of association which comes from the fact that they are carrion eaters.

Carrion is the dead and decaying flesh of an animal that is often eaten by scavengers like crows.

In human history, when we go to war with each other, there's often a lot of carrion, and people would see these birds circling the battlefields, and I think come to this assumption that they were, they were ill omens.

They were associated with death.

It's not just variation in their colors.

Corvids also differ in other aspects of their lives too.

Carrion crows, they will, uh, live in these pairs.

Although bears are big, powerful, and courageous, their weight and their dislike of violent exertion prevent them from preying on the large grazers such as moose, elk, and deer, while most of the smaller birds and mammals keep out of their reach, so that the flesh they get to eat is chiefly that of animals too young to escape or such as they take through accidental good luck.

Carrion is another important source of meat, and when a large carcass is found, bears are likely to scrape a shallow pit nearby and half bury, half cover it over for future use.

Fish are greatly appreciated by all bears and may form the principal source of food for some of the far northern species.

Black bears take fish when they can get them, but fish are only incidental in their diet.