Andreas Kieling, adventurer and wildlife filmmaker, has been attacked and injured by a bear, according to his own words. The 63-year-old posted a picture of himself with a bloody head, bloody hand and bloodstained clothes on his Facebook page on Sunday. Another photo shows his partially tattered jacket.

"Bear attack a week ago while filming rare waterfowl in the High Carpathians!" he wrote. "The bear is fine, he just followed his instincts! I'm doing okay again!" First, "Bild" had reported on the attack.

Where exactly the attack took place is not clear from the Facebook entry. The Carpathians stretch in a wide arc from Central to Eastern and Southeastern Europe. Many brown bears live there.

"I invaded his living space"

On Sunday night, Kieling finally spoke out in a video clip, the recording shows him with his hand bandaged and a scratch on his face. He is back in Germany.

"It happened incredibly fast," he reported there. He did not see the bear coming, but at first instinctively defended himself with his tripod and later protected his head and neck. Among other things, the bear bit his arm. His left hand was "pretty much in the bucket", the bear had also "scalped" him. But the surgeon got him back on track. "It's all going to be back."

The bear is not to blame, Kieling emphasizes. "I invaded its habitat, deep into the wilderness." It is difficult to say why the accident occurred. There are "umpteen possibilities as to why something like this happened". The animal may have had young, and it is also mating season.

Actually, he wanted to film dippers and the three-toed woodpecker. In total, it was the fifth serious accident he had experienced in his 32-year career, including two bear attacks in Alaska. But he will never forget the painful attack.

The bear is not a friend

Born in Thuringia in 1959, Kieling fled the GDR alone at the age of 16 and then worked as a sailor and forester, among other things. Since 1990 he has been travelling around the world as a documentary filmmaker.

As he writes on his website, his goal is "to document life in the wilderness, to learn from it without forgetting one's own limits".

He devoted himself to a wide variety of bear species, filming grizzlies, polar bears and the giant panda. In the media, he is therefore also referred to as the "bear man".

Although he spent a lot of time with the animals, he always spoke of them with respect. In 2012, he said, "If you think the bears are your friends, you're well on your way to being killed. You have to keep reminding yourself of that."