Bears came to eat cherries in Italian village on border of national park.

The sight of a female Marsican bear with her four cubs, in front of the admiring gaze of a small crowd in an Abruzzo village, has been immortalised in a photograph by zoologist Paolo Forconi, who has observed bears for many years.

The image was captured late in the evening on 3 July near the public park of Villalago, a small village which borders onto the vast Parco Nazionale d'Abruzzo Lazio e Molise, reports Italian newspaper La Repubblica.

"Already in the late afternoon we had seen the bear on the mountainside, eating cherries" - Forconi told La Repubblica - "Then she went down with her cubs to bathe in Lake Pio, in the public gardens of Villalago, and stopped to eat other cherries from a tree right on the roadside. When she saw us she looked at us, as did the little ones, she seemed almost undecided about what to do."

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The mother bear already made headlines at the end of May when the national park announced the news of the birth of the four cubs, a very rare event.

In recent days there have been increasing sightings of the bear family - Forconi told La Repubblica - with the animals getting nearer and nearer the village after eating all the wild cherries in the mountainside.

However he says that local residents have no fear: "The Marsican bear is a peaceful animal, if it is disturbed or chased it runs away or at best makes the 'false attack' running towards the person, making noise and causing a big fright but without even touching the person," adding that: "We must keep a distance of respect however, without disturbing them."

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The Marsican brown bear, a subspecies of the brown bear, is critically endangered, with only about 50-60 of the animals left in existence, compared to 100 in 1980.

Photo Paolo Forconi