Bobcats

My snowbike leaves wide tracks in the snow that many animals like to use for walking. Near my house, I've seen bobcat tracks superimposed on my snowbike tracks almost every morning.

Seeing that photo made me want to check my other trail cameras in bobcat-rich areas.

This is one such area... where bunny rabbits hang out and bobcats hunt them.

It made me laugh that a bobcat stood in almost the same spot a few nights later, getting his profile photographed.

And, on another animal trail, I'd noticed many bobcat scrapes throughout the autumn months. So, I decided to put a trail camera there to see what activity was occurring. I captured a photo of a mother bobcat and her kitten. Here is the mother...

And, here is her kitten, lagging a few seconds behind. The kitten is getting big but is still clearly smaller than mom.

I've observed that female bobcats don't leave scrapes (territorial markings) like I'd been seeing along this trail as often as males do. So, I wasn't too surprised when a bigger bobcat, a male, showed up the next night.

Here he is, preparing to scrape the ground and mark his territory.

Marking involves kicking backward multiple times with both back paws. In this case, he dug all the way down to dirt. On this occasion, he left scat in the scraped area.

One of the promising things about finding a bobcat marking area is that it usually attracts all sorts of wildlife to sniff it and then mark it themselves. I am fairly certain that mountain lions occasionally use this route so it'll be interesting to see if we get any photos of them.

I don't know what happens when a male bobcat meets a kitten. There are stories that wild male cats kill kittens but I don't know how many solid facts back up those stories. This trail seems like a place where this male and the kitten could meet...

It is the season when all the animals are changing their "usual" routes because of the snow and cold. I'm hoping that I can figure out more of the their "usual routes" this winter than I have in the past! These bobcat photos are a good start!