Winter: Amazing light and mountain lions

Shyla and I have been making it out in time to see the sun crest the eastern hills early in the morning. I adore the color that the rising sun paints her fur.

With the sun so low in the sky, it makes sun puddles in specific spots on the edge of the forest, and the rest of the forest in dark behind them.

It is the only part of the shorter wintery days that I truly love - seeing this special warm light on my girl.

The other morning, at about the same time as Shyla and I were worshiping the sunrise, our favorite pair of mountain lions was deep in the forest.

You can see the light of the sunrise barely filtering through the trees as the mother mountain lion arrived in front of my camera.

 Soon, her kitten, who seems to be growing exponentially bigger, bounded onto the scene.

 They appeared to play like a pair of puppies (or perhaps "kittens" would be a better analogy).

 They rolled and nuzzled each other for a long time. I love seeing these two.

Like last time, I picked up their images at more than one site so I'll be sharing more footage soon.

When I first moved to mountain lion territory, I imagined that mountain lions were everywhere in the forest when it was dark. I also imagined that they were nothing but killing machines. My photos have shown me that they are fairly numerous but only in certain places. Moreover, they are complex beings with a strong social attachments and a love of playing. They are not simply the scary predators that we humans believe them to be.

I hope that they continue to flourish. Having a strong population of top predators is important to our ecosystem. I also personally think that it's good that we humans are sometimes not at the top of the food chain.

On a different topic, I'm feeling worried that I might be heading into another phase of cluster migraines. I'm going to try to head it off with extra rest so I may not be visiting quite as much as usual in the near future. I hope it's a short phase.