Bonus! Black Bear Inspection

This is a recording of a Black Bear making a rough inspection of my recording rig in the forest a few miles outside the town of McCloud, Siskiyou County, California. I left my mics and recorder in the forest overnight in order to capture the dawn chorus the following morning. I had my Wildtronics microphone set on a tripod, and my Clippy microphones attached tree ears style to either side of the trunk of a small Black Oak tree, all connected to my Zoom F6 recorder. In the morning before I arrived to retrieve it, a curious Black Bear showed up to perform a thorough inspection of my setup. I can only assume I failed the inspection because he promptly knocked over the tri pod, pulled the furry wind protection off the Wildtronics mic, yanked the Clippy mics off the tree, and left my whole setup in disarray. Luckily, the worst damage was to only one of the Clippy mics, which had it's wiring pulled out of the mic capsule. The rest of the damage was only superficial, and the recorder wasn't damaged at all. Perhaps the bear didn't approve of being spied on, I will never know. Thankfully though, it kept recording through it all and I was able to capture the entire event with the Wildtronics mic. It's quite loud, as you might imagine a bear chewing on and pawing at a microphone would be. Nevertheless, I thought it was pretty funny and despite the damage to my gear I wanted to share it with you. The moral of this story is don't leave your recording gear out overnight in bear country and expect it not to be inspected.