"As hungry as a bear" is an expression of variable meaning. About one third of the year a bear has an omnivorous appetite; for another four months he lives on short rations; and during the remainder of the year he goes on a food strike and hibernates. A bear spends most of his waking hours making a living. He has simply a devastating appetite, and as his taste runs to small stuff and dainties, he is kept on the move. [Illustration: MEXICAN GRIZZLIES _Group in the Field Columbian Museum_] If he denned high up the mountain-side his surroundings are likely to be mostly snow-covered when he comes forth in the spring. Under such conditions he travels miles down the mountains to feed on the early plants already started on the low-lands. He may then slowly follow spring and summer in their steady advance up the far-reaching slopes. To a certain extent his movements are determined by the calendar. He feeds upon the best the season affords. He knows when each article of diet is in season and where in his home territory, or out of it, this abounds. In berry time look for a bear in a berry-patch. Like an enthusiastic fisherman he impatiently waits for the open season--spawning-time--and is on hand early to start fishing. Perhaps it would be well if we could think of the grizzly as being largely vegetarian. He digs up roots; feeds on weeds, tender shoots of shrubbery, fungi, mushrooms, berries, seeds, rose-hips, pine-nuts, and acorns; and also eats bark like a rabbit and grass like a grass-eater. The aspens were in bloom, laden with swollen buds and juicy catkins. Many birds were feasting on the catkins; and, looking over into a near-by aspen thicket, I saw a grizzly on a ledge also feeding eagerly. Reaching for a limb, first with one fore paw and then the other, he bit off a few inches and ate twigs, bark, and bloom. Occasionally he seized the top of an aspen with both paws, bent it down, and bit it off. It was similar to the fashion followed in eating wild plums and choke-cherries. A bear will reach up and pull down the top of a plum tree, and, biting it off, eat the small limbs, the bark, the leaves, and the fruit. A grizzly browsing in a wild raspberry-patch will bite off the tops of the vines together with the berries, the leaves, and the thorns. Sometimes the twigs and terminal buds of the pine, the fir, and the spruce are eaten. One day I saw a grizzly approaching in a manner which indicated that he knew exactly where he was going. On arriving at an alder clump by the brook he at once began tearing off the bark and eating it. On another occasion I watched a bear strip nearly all the bark within reach from a young balsam fir. I have often seen places where bears had bitten and torn chunks of bark from aspens and cottonwoods. Though they also tear the bark from pine and spruce trees, I do not believe that this is eaten as frequently as the bark of the broad-leaved trees.