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Tuesday, May 21, 2019

More Conversations Among Lions, Coyotes, and even a Moose

I love seeing the wildlife in our area via the lenses of trail cameras. The main reason is not just to get pretty pictures of them. Rather, I love seeing how all the myriad species interact.

The carnivores like to mark in the same places. I'm not sure how a spot gets established. Perhaps the king of the forest starts it with a mighty scrape of the pine needles and then a touch of pee. I recently showed you a mountain lion marking the spot shown below.

On a recent rainy and then snowy day, a mountain lion visited the scrape left by that previous lion. This one did not act like a dominant resident lion. This one seemed skittish. Perhaps that was because it was mid-morning, a time when people tend to be out and about. This spot is close to a hiking trail.
I've never seen a mountain lion looking as wet as that one. On that morning, I froze when I was caught out in the rain on my bike.

Then, a group of coyotes arrived at the same spot about 10 days later. Each of them peed over the mountain lions scent. It was so much fun to see them come through this spot as a group.

A similar thing happened at another scent post. First, the mountain lion walked past my trail cam into the spotlight. He scraped and left a scent mark.


Days later, a coyote visited. He made it clear what he thought about the mountain lion scent!

Then, a week later, a moose appeared. She is so big compared to the lion and coyote!

I have a video showing the behavior of each of these animals as they sniff the lions' scents.

13 comments:

  1. Everyone sure isn't shy about expressing their opinions!

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  2. BEing a crazy feline lady I can 100% understand the Coyote wanting to cover up the feline pp.
    House cat Feline pp is concentrated and very aromatic. I cannot imagine the fragrance a mountain lion's pp might leave.
    Hugs Cecilia

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  3. Another interesting compilation of life on your mountain. Thanks for sharing.

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  4. This is so interesting and makes me wonder what I would see if I had a camera like yours. The wild animals have disappeared from here, all I see now are coyotes and ravens. Lots of those, but not much else. Maybe all this rain will make some of them return. So glad you have your trail camera footage to share with us.

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  5. they are amazing. your coyotes are larger than ours here in FL. we laugh when we are walking because Big looks for pee to pee on, he will pass pole after pole then stop at THE one. just like these guys do. I think they are saying Take That

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  6. Survival of the fittest. Awesome.

    Have a fabulous day. Scritches to the pups. ♥

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  7. You could start a show on cable called Scent Wars!

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  8. Guess they all have an opinion. Makes for very interesting peemail:)

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  9. Such a treat to see the wildlife in their natural habitat.

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  10. Leaving a little or a much bigger message to say I WAS here!!! Love the actions of them all, specially in the falling snow.

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  11. We love seeing such beautiful wildlife. This is very cool to see each day a new animal come along and smell the scent of the recently animal that was just there. Plus marking there territory. Thanks for the share. Have a great day.
    World of Animals

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  12. I think all those animals are like Grand Central Station!
    love
    tweedles

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  13. It's so funny that each animal has to have the last word!

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