Paula Bingham, who lives a scant two miles from the Old Lyme Town Hall, awoke June 29 to a bear, feet from her deck, climbing her bird feeder.

“It was a little startling, because we have an eight-foot deer fence,” said Bingham, a 25-year resident of the town. “It was just amazing that it was right there,” she said of her early morning encounter with the fence-climbing bear.

Recently, Lyme and Old Lyme have had a spate of black bear sightings, including small young bears and large adult bears, which have surprised and thrilled residents.

A wildlife biologist with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection said the bear population is slowly spreading into Eastern Connecticut and there’s no need for alarm.

“I have never been more excited to see hundreds of dollars’ worth of damage,” said Dorene Saunders, a 30-year resident of Old Lyme living on Short Hills Road, about the damage a bear did to her sturdy wrought iron bird feeder about three weeks ago. The bear ate all the bird seed, and then proceeded to play with some of the other feeders she had, “like the whole backyard was like a big old toy.”

A week or two later, she saw a much larger bear. When the bear heard yelling, “it stood behind a tree and stomped its feet so hard you could feel the ground shake,” she said.

Stephen Morgan of Old Lyme, who has driven just about every road in Lyme over his 15 years delivering for The Day, said he was finishing up his 79-mile daily journey a little before 6 a.m. on June 26 when he turned onto Salem Road in Lyme.

Accustomed to watching the sides of the road for animals during his 2 to 6 a.m. route, Morgan said he spotted something he did not recognize. He stopped, and to his right was a large Black Bear, approximately five feet from his passenger side headlight.

“Must’ve been two-and-a-half feet across his backside, and he turned to look at me, turned the other way and just kept walking,” he said. “He was so majestic.”

Jason Hawley, Wildlife Biologist with the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection, reached by phone on Monday, said that Black Bears can get quite large.

“The largest one we’ve ever weighed in Connecticut was like 650 pounds,” he said, but on average, males are around 350 pounds, and females are around 225 pounds.

Hawley, who holds a Bachelor’s degree in fisheries and wildlife conservation and a Master’s degree in conservation biology, said that, despite their size, they are very docile and passive animals. “There’s really almost no risk to public safety,” he said, adding, “they’re not aggressive by nature.”

Linda Bond-Jenkins, 68, of Flat Rock Hill Road, has lived in Old Lyme for most of her life. She has seen a good deal of wildlife in that time, but never, prior to June 18, had she seen a bear. “It was really strange,” she said. She went outside in the evening to get her bird feeders as a precaution, having been alerted to other nearby bear sightings, and “as I opened the door, I looked, and I said, ‘that is a bear.” She yelled at it, and it tried to climb a tree in her yard before running off.

According to Hawley, food is a major motivator for bears. People may unintentionally feed bears with bird feeders, compost piles, and garbage cans, and eventually the bears become “food conditioned where they are associating people with food,” he said. “We have bears going into people’s houses all the time, like breaking into people’s houses and going through the fridge. It’s almost a daily occurrence now,” in the northwestern portion of the state.

The general feeling among the residents is amazement tinged with caution. “They’re beautiful animals,” said Bingham, though she has concerns about her two Jack Russell Terriers who run freely in their fenced three acres.

Hawley offered some reassurance about dogs. “Bears hate dogs,” he said. “I can’t even think of a time where we’ve had a predatory attack by a bear on a dog, it’s always been defensive where the bear was defending itself because the dog went after it.” He suggested keeping dogs leashed to avoid that situation.

Hawley explained that most of the sightings in eastern Connecticut are males who are ranging, looking for a female, and that they will most likely head back north when they do not find one.

Though some of the residents expressed concern that human encroachment on bear habitat is to blame for their sudden appearance, Hawley said that is not the case. When Europeans colonized Connecticut, they cleared land for farming and livestock. By the mid 1800’s, only 20% of Connecticut was forested. The loss of habitat, combined with people who shot and poisoned the bears, drove bears out of the state. As farming waned, the natural habitat came back, and bears began to make their way back into the state.

He notes that female ranges do not expand very much, so spread of the bear population is slow, and that almost all breeding populations are west of the Connecticut River, which acts as a natural barrier to expansion, however, he has had reports of two females with cubs in the area.

“We know that there is really great bear habitat down in that whole area in Eastern Connecticut, they just haven’t established there yet,” and he estimates it will take another 15-20 years to see a similar sized population locally, to what exists in the western part of the state.

When asked about recommendations for local residents, he responded, ““I don’t want to create hysteria and say ‘Oh, take your bird feeders down now or bears are going to be hanging around your house,’ because that’s just not the case in the near future.”

He continued, “I think the best advice for that part of the state is, if a bear rips your bird feeder down—and you’ll know it if it’s a bear—if that happens, or if they get in your garbage, then take the steps to secure them.” He notes that birds do not need supplemental food this time of year, and feeders can be safely put back up December 1.

Additional tips are to spread ammonia around garbage that cannot be secured in a garage or in a bear proof can, to not add sweet smelling food to compost piles, and to use an electric fence to protect beehives.

“If you encounter a bear, you don’t have to run,” he says. “Just hold your ground, clap your hands, talk to the bear, wave your arms so they see you, and then, 99 times out of 100, they’re just going to move on their way, and the other-- they are curious animals-- sometimes they’ll stand there and look at you, or try to circle downwind to smell you so they know what you are.”

Hawley anticipates the bear population slowly increasing, but, for now, he said, “it’s so rare for them to have actual physical contact with people, it’s barely a concern, especially in that part of the state.”