Chelmer's Floral Nature Notes

I'll take a break shortly, but at the moment I feel I'm on a bit of a roll, so here's another nature note which I'm sharing with Tommy, the Bears Unlimited gardening bear. Sorry you've had to wait for this post; some of the chaps joined me on a mini adventure last week, which put things on hold for a few days, news of this adventure coming soon.

As I write this post, it's pouring with rain outside and it hasn't stopped raining all weekend. It feels decidedly unspring-like, but a couple of weeks ago it looked a little more promising, and, on a dry and snow free day, Tommy and I wandered outside to look at the first flowers of the year.


First stop was at one of my all time favourites, the cheery yellow aconites. They are so apecial to me and Tommy, as they appear just about first of all, and we are always amazed that the rain, snow and cold don't put them off appearing to lift our spirits. We also love their choirboy ruff collars and never fail to delight at nature's use of complementary colours.

After admiring the aconites, we moved on to admire another winter garden classic: the snowdrops. These have spread well around the garden and there are now clumps thriving in lots of places, including the lawn.


We don't mind them growing in the lawn though as they're such lovely flowers. In fact, given the current state of the lawn, which is more mud than grass after all the terrible weather, they're the best bit of our current back lawn.

We're sure Tommy will work wonders with it once a dry spell comes, along with some sunshine.

Lots of love Chelmer & Tommy xxx

Chelmer's Nature Notes Returns Again

How could we almost have forgotten it? We had the most amazing natural encounter last summer, that we've just remembered, we haven't shared with you.

Gardening bear, Tommy was responsible for bringing it to our attention. He was dead heading some peonies in the border to the side of the lounge window, when he looked up and found himself face to face with a nestful of fledglings.

And they were no ordinary fledglings. After he'd retreated to a discreet distance and called the rest of us, our quiet observance of the comings and goings of the parents at the nest, revealed that this was none other than a brood of spotted flycatchers. We were so excited.

We wanted to watch them as much as we could, but didn't want to disturb them and upset the parents by peeking into the nest too often. As we could see the nest when we stood in the lounge and looked out the window, Jimmy had the brilliant idea of setting up a camera in the lounge.

Within the hour, fledgecam was set up and running and, being the B.U. wildlife expert, I was in charge of the filming, ably assisted by Curly.


It worked a treat and gave us a very priviledged view of the nest. We could leave the camera rolling and watch what it was filming on our TV screen from the comfort of our armchairs. We were hooked and learnt lots about these delightful, but rarely seen birds. We're sure you'd like to see a clip from the camera, so here is one ...



It was quite a sad morning when, 6 days after we'd first seen them, we looked out to find an empty nest and the fledglings flown. Unfortunately, they were up too early for us to witness them flying from the nest. What a sight that would have been.

We hope the youngsters are thriving, and, with a bit of luck, they might be back this summer.

Lots of love Chelmer, Curly and all at Bears Unlimited xxx

Chelmer's Nature Notes Returns

Do you remember my nature notes posts from last year? I hope you enjoyed them and are looking forward to another. Today's nature note relates to an incident last summer. It couldn't have happened now, as it would have resulted in a frazzled bird, for reasons I'll soon explain.

To start at the beginning, early one morning, while the rest of the chaps were having a lie in, Curly and I were in the kitchen of the bear cave, enjoying a bowl of cereals and a cup of tea. We consumed both with relish, noticing nothing out of the ordinary. When we'd finished, we put our crockery in the dishwasher and started to walk out the kitchen. It was then that we got the feeling that we were not alone, in fact it was more than a feeling, it was a definite realisation, as only another living creature could be making the rustling/fluttering noise that was coming from the direction of our Aga.

I looked across, puzzled, and then saw some movement from a ventilation cowl which has a grilled front and looks like this.


At first I thought it must be a butterfly, but as we went for a closer look, I saw a pair of bright black eyes looking at me and realised we had a bird behind bars. Our prisoner was in fact a gorgeous great tit who had clearly taken a tumble down our chimney and then found his exit route blocked by bars.

We were eager to give him his freedom back, but first we made sure we got a fine close up shot of us with our avian prisoner ...


We opened the kitchen window wide before we lifted off the cowl, and it was very gratifying to see our new friend fly off and reclaim his freedom.

It was a good job this incident happened in summer as story might not have had such a happy ending, had the Aga been lit.

Lots of love Chelmer & Curly xxx

Poor Paw

Randolph hasn't been the only member of Bears Unlimited to suffer a recent trauma. I, Dessie, suffered a trauma of my own, just days after Randolph's mishap.

It happened when we were having a relaxing evening, talking and enjoying a pint of our favourite beer, Wherry. We were looking forward to the start of the Six Nations rugby and arguing about the merits of our respective teams (bearing in mind we have supporters of England, Scotland, France and Ireland in our midst). It's hard to talk about rugby without trying out a few moves to illustrate our points, so we started to get a bit physical.

What I forgot, no doubt a pint of Wherry was partly responsible, was that my paws are fairly delicate. They are not well suited to the rough and tumble of a rugby pitch. I got stuck in and was grabbed the ball and started to run. The next thing I remember was having, what felt like an out of body experience, looking down on my paw which was not attached to my body.


Fortunately as my paws aren't too sturdy, it was something of a case of easy go, easy come. The chaps insisted I have another glass of Wherry to act as an anaesthetic, the next thing I knew, my paw had been re-attached by the B.U. medics.

I'm sticking to armchair rugby from now on and thoroughly enjoying the tournament. Lets hope that we've seen the last of B.U. bodily mishaps for a while.

Lots of love Dessie xxx

A Tale of Two Tummies

Dear readers, Benji Beddy Bear here to tell you all about the trauma recently suffered by my dear friend Randolph. Late one evening, when, being a night shift worker, he was about to start work, he went down with a bad stomach. We were all very worried: was it indigestion, food poisoning or even appendicitis?

In fact it was none of these. What you have to know is that Randolph is a hot water bottle and his tummy is made of rubber and holds water - or it did! He was about to take his usual enthusiastic flying leap into a cold bed, in order to do his magic warming, when he started to drip.

On closer investigation we discovered a terminal problem ...


Just look at the size of that tear. Randolph was naturally very upset, so I did my best to comfort him.

Fortunately, while this was terminal for Randolph's tummy, it wasn't the end of Randolph. We take disaster recovery very seriously within Bears Unlimited and regularly update and test our plans. We had, thankfully, planned for just such a catastrophe as Randolph's tummy failing, and therefore had a replacement to hand. This time a white one, rather than a red one.


Within minutes Randolph was fitted with the donor organ and was ready to work again. This left us with just one small dilemma, and you see Randolph puzzling over the solution in the last picture. We had to decide what to do with the donor's external shell. As you can see it had quite a funky freisian print. Randolph thought it might make quite a nice sleeping bag, although it would need to be for a smaller sized bear than him.

It is lovely to see my friend with a spring in his hoof again.

Lots of love

Benji xxx

What to Buy Greenbelt Fans

We hope you've enjoyed finding out about our Christmas presents and got lots of inspiration for present buying. As so much time has now passed since Christmas, we're going to make this the last of the 'What to Buy A Bear' series, even though there were plenty more presents we could tell you about!

The rest of the chaps say they never have any problems working out what to buy me (Gio) and my best friend Bris. This is because we are such ardent fans of the Greenbelt Arts Festival, and going there, over the August Bank Holiday is normally the highlight of our year (last year was a bit of an exception, since, as you all know, I had the amazing opportunity to lead George and Yorkie on pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago, straight after Greenbelt). Anyway, back to Greenbelt, there are so many wonderful speakers and performers that we have a list of their books and music that we'd like, longer than our arm. And the Greenbelt shop also provides great present ideas.


This Christmas's presents were spot on. Firstly we got one of Amy Wadge's CDs, called 'No Sudden Moves'. Amy is a very talented singer/songwriter and we love everything she writes and sings. It's just a pity she lives in Wales so doesn't get over to the East of England to perform too often. It's worth going to Wales to hear her though!

On the book front, we received 'Eternal Echoes' written by a Greenbelt favourite, the poet and philosoher, John O'Donohue. Very sadly he died suddenly 2 years ago, so we won't have the experience of hearing him speak at Greenbelt again. However, he lives on through his amazing writing. He was an incredible wordsmith and we know exactly what a writer in the Guardian meant, when he referred to his 'dazzling vocabularly'. You would have to read some of it to see what we mean, perhaps that's not such a bad idea!

We shall treasure both these gifts for years to come, but we're also already looking forward to Greenbelt 2010 with the promise of lots of new experiences.

Lots of love, Gio & Bris xxx

What to Buy a Mechanic Bear

Hi Blue Bear here, (just in case you haven’t met me before, I’m not blue because its cold, I’m always blue, which I think is a fantastic colour to be, as does my (also blue) friend Marcus).

As those who know me are aware, I look after the Bears Unlimited fleet of Bearmobiles, and am very keen on trying to reduce the collective Bears Unlimited carbon footprint.

So for Christmas this year, the chaps gave me the perfect gift: something to help the larger of our two Bearmobiles to reduce its carbon foot print, by improving its MPG (or KPL is you are metric). What they gave me was a Broquet® fuel catalyst.


After I got it, I had to inspect it first, and then read carefully all about it, and how to install it in the Bearmobile.


The Broquet® was developed years ago to make fighter aeroplanes run better, and now they are put in cars. Apparently it will produce a cleaner, more efficient engine, and should improve our fuel economy by 7% to 12% and also reduce emissions. Its sounds fantastic, so without further ado, I got my jack out, jacked up the car, and crawled underneath to install it.


The Broquet® has now been installed and hopefully we will soon see the results!

Happy, but green motoring

Lots of love Blue Bear xxx