Black bear
The only bear left in California, on a flag that still shows the other one.
In brief
Ursus americanus, Ursidae, order Carnivora.
- Visitor, recorded on a trail camera
- Native across forested North America
- Omnivore
Where it lives
Forested North America. Every wild bear in California is a black bear: the grizzly on the state flag was gone from California by 1924.
When you see it
Recorded here on June 22, 2026, on a trail camera at the creek.
What it eats
Overwhelmingly plants - berries, acorns, grasses - with insects, carrion, and the occasional fawn. Black is also a poor name: they come in brown, cinnamon and blond.
Here
One camera frame at the creek. Bears pass through the property; they do not live on it. Keep food indoors and the tally stays at one frame.
By Yggdrasil Springs
Next in the series
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Western honey bee
Honey is made on this property. Worth being straight about the bee that makes it: it is not from here.
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Grey fox
The only dog in the Americas that climbs trees, and it does it to get away from the other dogs.
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Twelve-spotted skimmer
Three black spots on each wing, and the white ones between them mean it is a male.
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California whiptail
Out on open gravel at midday in August, which is when the other lizards here have gone under a rock.
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Striped skunk
Tail up is a warning, not a shot. It carries enough for five or six and needs more than a week to make more.
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Anna's hummingbird
It does not migrate. That single fact is why the winter-flowering shrubs on this land matter.
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Turkey vulture
One of the very few birds that can smell. It finds carrion under a closed forest canopy, from the air.
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Mule deer
The most numerous large animal on the land, and the reason the mountain lion comes through.
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Mountain lion
The cameras catch it through the year. Once in five years, in daylight.
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Whiteleaf manzanita
The first thing in flower here, and often the only thing. Pink urns in January, on a shrub that peels itself red.
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Chaparral currant
It flowers when nothing else does. That is the whole point of it, and it is why the hummingbirds stay.
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The Butte Fire made this plant's decade. It came up through the burn and it is now one of the commonest shrubs on the land.
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Deer brush
Cream plumes over the whole hillside in April, and seed that can wait decades in the ground for the next fire.
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Yerba santa
Sticky, resinous, and named holy herb by people who used it for a cough long before anyone wrote it down.
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Mountain misery
Ankle-deep fern-like mats under the oaks, white rose flowers, and a resin that sticks to everything that walks through it.
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Twining snakelily
The only snakelily that climbs. It uses the shrub next to it to get its flowers up into the light.
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Shooting star
Swept-back magenta petals on a bare stalk. The shape is not decoration: it is a set of instructions for a bumblebee.
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Woolly Indian paintbrush
The red is not petals, and the plant is not feeding itself. Both facts take some getting used to.
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Yellow evening primrose
Opens at dusk, worked by moths in the dark, and orange and collapsed by the next afternoon.
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California everlasting
Papery whether it is flowering or setting seed, which makes it the hardest plant here to date honestly.
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Toyon
White flowers in June that nobody looks at, and red berries in December that everybody does.
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Canyon live oak
One tree that looks like two, and an acorn cup that settles the argument in about ten seconds.
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The blue acorns
They are not from a blue oak. Almost every source asked about them says otherwise, and almost every source is wrong.
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Silver bush lupine
The tall lupine: a woody, silver-leaved shrub to about 150 cm, holding violet spikes above the burn.
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Sky lupine
The short lupine: an annual, ankle high, that turns a whole hillside blue for about three weeks in April.
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Buckbrush
The other ceanothus. Stiff, grey, wedge-leaved and evergreen, and it flowers a month before deer brush.
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Black oak
The tree the Sentinels are. It is also the one that comes back from the root after a fire that killed everything above ground.
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Poison oak
It is not an oak, it is not always a shrub, and it does not always have green leaves. The one thing that never changes is the three.
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Yellow starthistle
Not a thistle, not from here, and fatal to horses. This one is a problem to be managed rather than a plant to admire.
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California buckeye
It drops its leaves in August, not November. The falls are named for it.
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Ponderosa pine
Needles in threes, and bark that smells of vanilla in the afternoon sun.
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Incense cedar
Not a cedar. The flat sprays are the field mark, and pencils are made of it.
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Western bracken fern
One of the most widely distributed plants on earth, and it stands green in dry grass in August.
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Common mullein
Not from here. A rosette of felt one year, a two-meter spike the next, and then it is dead.
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Bull thistle
Not from here, and the spiny wings running down the stem are what name it.
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Himalayan blackberry
Not from here, and not going anywhere. The fruit is the reason the fox and the bear come through.
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Northern California black walnut
Native to California, and almost certainly standing here because somebody planted it.
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Sierra iris
Pale yellow, low in the dry grass, and it grows nowhere outside California.
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White morning glory
A native vine with a flower twice the size of the introduced bindweed it gets mistaken for.
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