Bobcat Tales

I have a tendency to take our abundant bobcats for granted. However, I love watching them, especially at this time of year.

I see two special things in the fall. One is that bobcats start marking like crazy. They love to rub their faces and bodies in the area of the base of a bear marking tree, probably due to the many scents that the bears leave behind there. I'm not sure why bobcat marking reaches a crescendo at this time of year.

A bobcat starting to mark

A bobcat looking up in the middle of marking

The second reason why bobcats are such fun to observe in the fall is that they bring out their kittens to areas where my trail cameras can capture footage of them. For the summer, the kittens spent most of their time in dens, with their mother nursing them and then progressing to bringing them prey to eat in the den. They switch dens frequently to avoid being discovered.

I was absolutely thrilled with some bobcat footage that I captured this summer. In the first sequence of the video below, a bobcat is determined to mark an area in the far left of the frame. A striped skunk is equally determined to chase the bobcat away. I laughed and laughed as I watched the chases!

The second clip is of a mother bobcat and her two kittens who are marking the ground and a rock at the base of a bear marking tree. I adore seeing bobcat kittens - they are so cute! And, I'm thrilled for this mother bobcat. After years of having only one bobcat emerge in the fall, this is her second year in a row of having two!!!

Enjoy the video either here or at Youtube.

As the Bobcat World Turns

The bobcat family has been active recently. This is the mother bobcat, out on her own. She had probably stashed the kittens in a den.

At first, she looked like she was "all business", walking briskly past the camera.

Then, after she had passed the spot that most animals mark (at the base of the bear marking tree to her right), she started to act goofy.

Then, she got even more goofy, rolling over on her back like her kittens do.

As quickly as she'd arrived, she leaped to her feet and departed. When I've seen the seemingly stoic bobcats and mountain lions around here, it never occurred to me until now that they do let down their guard and goof around like this.

A couple of hours later, the mother bobcat walked past the same camera again. This time, she carried a mountain cottontail rabbit, that she had just killed. She was carrying it to the den for her kittens to eat.

 She seemed to sidestep past the spot where she'd acted so goofy just hours earlier.

Then, I had no more sightings of the family until ten days later.

One afternoon last week (3:30PM on 10/22), a pair of bobcat kittens came out of their den to check out the world. I love how dappled with spots their fur coats are by comparison to their mom's coat. These are trail camera photos zoomed in on the kittens.

You may remember that our last sighting of the bobcat kittens with their mom involved a skunk causing the family to scatter. After the skunk passed, one kitten didn't reappear, even though the mom and the remaining kitten remained in the area for hours. These photos tell me that both kittens are fine.

They also show us the kittens' first experience with snow. It snowed a few hours before these photos were taken. The snow melted very fast after it fell.

The two kittens were playful in front of the camera. I love seeing their bright white but spotted bellies! It's even a better view than we had of their mother's belly 10 days earlier.

I'm guessing that mom was nearby, keeping an eye on the two kittens but not joining in their play.

I'm so happy that our world still has places where the wildlife can relax and just be themselves. Our neck of the woods is notably still that way because there's so little human "traffic" on the trails.

That's why I work so hard at training our dogs, especially focusing on being able to recall them away from all animals.

I think it helps keep our dogs and the wildlife safe.  And, it's fun! I will write soon about the hit that our training has taken since my spine injury and how I'm trying to adapt.

But, for today, I'm mainly happy to see that the two bobcat kittens are both fine!