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A friend in Hanover had told her about a bear family that traveled through her property and she invited Holland to see them. There was still some snow on the ground, but it was clear from sets of tracks that the mother and three yearlings had emerged from their winter dormancy. Holland followed the tracks and found the family asleep.
For two days, Holland took up a post near the bears, setting up a tripod some 50 feet away from the family and taking photographs with a Canon 5D camera and telephoto lenses.
“I felt so privileged. I was so lucky,” she said in a telephone interview from her home in Hartland.
Holland has turned those photographs into her latest children’s book, Yodel the Yearling, published by the South Carolina imprint Arbordale.
Arbordale also has released Animal Ears, the most recent in Holland’s series of children’s books explaining how animals have adapted to use their eyes, mouths, legs and feet, and tails.
Holland, who used to write a column titled “Naturally Curious” for this newspaper, also has a blog of the same name that draws close to 6,000 readers. The blog gets her out daily, taking pictures and posting them. Whatever draws her attention, she relies on the telephoto lenses to capture myriad flora and fauna.
“I am really careful about not disturbing them. If you’re close you won’t get natural behavior,” she said.
Holland said she believes the bear family is the same family that was removed from Hanover last spring. The mother and three cubs had become a nuisance, the Valley Newsreported at the time, rifling dumpsters and backyard bird feeders. Two of the bears entered a home on Thompson Terrace.
The three yearlings ended up being removed from Hanover at the end of May, to some controversy. They were relocated to northern New Hampshire, and one of them was shot last fall in Quebec. The mother wasn’t trapped.
Their ease around humans and human habitation may have contributed to their sense of relaxation around Holland.
They knew she was there, Holland said, but did not seem overly concerned about her presence. They slept, nursed and foraged and clambered up their “babysitting” tree, a white pine, where they took refuge when their mother left them alone for short periods of time. One inquisitive yearling repeatedly approached Holland to sniff at her while the mother kept an eye on it — and Holland.
“They were wild bears but habituated to humans,” she said.
The book shows the yearlings climbing, playing and investigating their surroundings. It also includes an appendix with general scientific information about bears.
The series of books about animal ears and eyes, etc., teach children about how birds, animals, reptiles and insects use their senses for survival. When a fox’s ears, for example, point forward other foxes know it is listening; when they lay flat the fox is apprehensive. A rabbit’s big ears scoop up sound, enabling it to better detect predators. The extraordinarily sharp ears of a woodpecker can pick up the noise of insects crawling in trees, telling the woodpecker where to excavate.
These days Holland concentrates much of her energy on her blog. “I have a lot of interaction with the readers who seem to really appreciate it. It’s just very rewarding, I’m constantly exploring and learning for it.”
Readers pose questions or send in photos of things in nature they can’t identify. Holland also posts her own mystery photos, inviting readers to try to solve the puzzle of what they’re looking at. Often, questions come in from students in the classroom.
“I’m just delighted it’s part of any classroom,” Holland said.
She is more grateful to the readers of her blog than a casual audience could know. Last summer, her daughter’s husband died unexpectedly, leaving her daughter with a 2-year-old son to raise on her own. When her daughter found out after her husband’s death that she was pregnant, Holland posted about it on the blog and said if readers wanted to contribute to a fund to help her daughter, they could.
To her astonishment, readers of the blog contributed thousands of dollars.
“They were really, really generous. They hadn’t even met me, much less (her daughter and grandson). They were like a family, really. … They’re a real part of my life, and I value their input and questions.”
Holland plans on exploring more aspects of animal adaptation, including fur, feathers and scales. But some of that will have to wait: Her daughter is close to giving birth to her second child. And it would help if the snow began to disappear.
“I’m ready, I’m really ready for the end of winter,” she said.
Nicola Smith can be reached at mail@nicolasmith.org.