A Mountain Lion Visit

We live at high elevation in the mountains. I stop and gaze at the mountains almost every day, in disbelief that we get to live here. We are lucky.

At this time of year, however, I do wish that spring would come to our neck of the woods. I'm tired of the snow and the cold.

Recently, a few sure-fire signs have emerged. I heard the trill of a hummingbird's wings, not once, but twice yesterday! I quickly cleaned a hummingbird feeder and put it out. It's not easy for the forerunners of the hummers to find enough food at this time of year. We have very few blooming flowers so the human residents love helping them. I haven't seen any at our feeder yet but I hope that I will soon!

Another sure sign is that the mountain lions start passing through our area again, in their never-ending search for prey. The elk herd likes our elevation at this time of year, and I suspect that their presence is why the lions return.

This is a trail camera that I go near on my snow bike almost every day. A lion passed it at night recently. The bright light in distance is the moon!

He never slowed down by the camera. You'll notice that he doesn't have a collar on. The decade-long study that collared many of our mountain lions has finally ended. I haven't captured photos of a mountain lion with a collar on since last fall. I hope that I never do again!

You might remember that we had a mother mountain lion with two young kittens in our neck of the woods for all of last summer. The mother was collared.

I believe that she moved her kittens to another area around the end of October of last year. I'm hoping that they return again this spring. The kittens will be almost as big as mom by then. I am a tad worried because I thought that mom looked a bit skinny by the end of last fall. Let's hope that we see her again, sans collar and ear tags!

Just recently, we had another mountain lion come through our neck of the woods. He passed in front of one of my oldest trail cams that takes video. He stayed in front of the cam for about 1.5 minutes, rubbing his face on an old elk bone that was lying there. I thought that you might enjoy seeing the video here or at Youtube.

I'm sorry that the video isn't the greatest quality but I hope you enjoyed seeing a cougar doing his "usual stuff" in the dead of night when he thought that no one was watching!

Happy Sunday!