Feline and Nature Friday: Male lion on the track of our caterwauling female

I've shared a couple of loud videos (here and here) of a female mountain lion who caterwauled her way around our forest in February. Usually, that means that she is in estrus and trying to call in potential mates.

 I did pick up footage of a male mountain lion who went around to most of the same spots where she'd been. He was clearly a male because he was leaving "scrapes" made by his huge hind paws and he had what one of my friends calls "the fuzzy dice" under his tail. When you get a peek under the tail of a female, you see nothing but the anus. A male has a clear dark pair of enlarged spots. I don't have a photo of that but watch for those peeks in the video.

Here he is marking, kicking back pine needles with his hind paws.

He departed after marking. I tried to track him to see where he went from here but he balanced on a knife's edge of a rocky ridge with no snow. As far as I could tell, he was leaping from one melted boulder to another on an extremely steep slope - so I couldn't track him

A couple of things amaze me about the travels of both lions. They are never far from civilization. You might think that these spots are far away from humans - but they are on the edges of where people live and hike. Second, I am amazed by how well they can smell signs of each other. This male was following the female a couple of weeks later. She was doubtless out of estrus by the time that he was there but he was still on her route.

In the video, you'll see that the lion lies down on the ground and then starts to eat something at about the 1:16 mark. He is eating from where an older scrape is. The surface is pine needles that is doubtless permeated with the scent of multiple lions. Do you have any idea what he might be eating? I am asking because you all taught me that cats, including bobcats, like to eat grass. I'm hoping that you might have ideas about this!

Check out the video if you have time!