Within a few weeks, northern Minnesota black bears preparing for hibernation will scrounge for 12,000 calories a day worth of food, a search that might lead the ravenous bruins to trash cans and bird feeders, due to a shortage of berries and nuts caused by the state's ongoing drought. In southern Minnesota, meanwhile, ring-necked pheasants just ended what might have been their best hatch in decades, thanks to the same extremely dry conditions. The birds could benefit further by a banner grasshopper crop — the bane of many farmers — that is just now showing up on the state's farmlands, again due to the drought.