Mountain Lion Family of Three

You might remember that I captured this photo of a mountain lion next to our house.

Since then, I've checked some other trail cameras, and I discovered that a family of three mountain lions were in our neck of the woods around that time.

Here's the arrival of the first one in front of a trail camera about 3/4 of a mile from our house. Immediately, I noticed that he had fading spots, telling me that he's a kitten.

Just after him, his mother arrived. She is larger in stature and has no spots. They both sniffed beneath a tree where many mountains lions have marked in the past.

Then, to top off the party, another kitten arrived. Do you see the stripes on the inside of his front right leg? That's another sure sign that this cat is a kitten. Adult mountain lions have no spots or stripes. My guess is that these kittens were 4-5 months old at the time of these photos based on the visible spots.

The three of them sniffed the ground together. I must say that three mountain lion tails in a row is an intimidating sight to me when I'm standing next to where they were photographed!

Mom was the first to depart.

And then the trail camera captured my favorite photo of them all. The kitten who is looking at the camera actually looks cute! And he is so obviously a youngster!

There was clearly one larger and one smaller kitten. I'm not sure why they are different sizes. Perhaps one is a male and the other is a female. Or perhaps one is better at claiming his/her share of the food than the other.

Soon, all three had departed. I didn't get photos in any other locations of the three together, although I did get a few photos that could have been the mother by herself (like the first photo in this post).

This is the first time that my trail cameras have captured photos of a mother and two kittens in our neck of the woods. I hope that we get more glimpses of them as they grow up!