Predators and Prey All Around Us

The wildlife have been following their winter patterns, with the elk passing through here before big snows to go to lower ground.

Of course, they usually don't just "pass through" without lingering in the meadows to graze a bit.

Their predators, mountain lions, follow. You've seen this photo before. My trail camera took it when the elk herd was nearby. It's very rare for a mountain lion to be moving around in the midst of our trail system near the middle of the day.

You haven't seen the next photos yet, taken by a trail camera in the same general area. I quickly moved a camera to this spot after I saw many mountain lion tracks all over a look-out area where the grazing elk herd can be seen.

Within 24 hours, I had mountain lion photos taken by the newly placed camera. I believe that the photos show a mother mountain lion and a kitten. Here is the mother...

She stopped in front of the camera, with her beautiful long tail pointed toward it.

Then she turned toward the camera, perhaps noticing its soft red glow.

She sniffed the ground in front of it, almost exactly where I'd seen dozens of overlapping mountain lion tracks the previous day. She looked strong, and she had no paraphernalia like collars or ear tags weighing her down! Her belly wasn't bulging, suggesting to me that she was hunting.

After a short sniff, she walked toward the elk herd.

Then, about 40 minutes later, she passed the camera at high speed. The camera triggers within 0.1 seconds of an animal entering its field of view so this lion was moving fast, only letting the camera capture a view of her tail and back leg.

Then, about 5 seconds later, a smaller mountain lion sprinted past the camera going in the same direction as the first one.

My best guess is that this is a mother-kitten pair. However, because I didn't get a great photo of the second lion, it is also possible that it's a pair of adult lions who were fighting for position near the elk herd.

Since all the snow has fallen, the elk herd has passed nearby again, probably heading to lower ground where there's less snow. However, I can't ride my snow bike to the cameras that might have mountain lion photos on them because the snow is still too loose and soft.

In the meantime, we humans and dogs continue to go about our everyday activities. If I didn't have a knowledge of animal tracks and hadn't posted trail cameras in key spots, I'd have no idea that there was so much wildlife activity near us as we play, whether it be in the calm sunshine...

...or the wild and windy weather of recent days!

I'm so glad that our fiercest predators are flourishing despite the ever-increasing presence of humans and their pets. Except for rare cases, our mountain lions stay invisible, not wanting to interact with us. That's the best way for them to survive around unpredictable predators like us humans.