The Magic Carnivore Tree - Bobcat, Coyote, Fox, and Lion All Visit

Some of you may remember the big pine tree where mountain lions have marked repeatedly this winter.

You might remember this guy kicking off the marking season back in November.

Since then, the mountain lions have paraded to this spot. Each male has left his own mark in almost the same place as all the other lions.

Other carnivore species have visited as well. Here is a bobcat, small in stature but large in spirit.

As he departed the spot, he looked regally in the direction of the camera.

The next visitor was a coyote who brazenly urinated directly over the lions' scent.

The coyote was very wary, fleeing toward the cover of the forest a couple of times (as you'll see in the video). Here, he stood still to listen for danger. I bet that he smelled the recent markings left by lions who could easily kill him.

Finally, one of the kings of our forest visited just a couple of nights ago. He marked in almost the identical spot as the first lion back in November!

My trail cameras record video, which I put together into a single video of the visits of all of these animals. You can watch it here or over at Youtube.

Happy Wildlife Monday!

A Mountain Lion and her Two Kittens

Some of you know that I've been lamenting how few mountain lions my trail cams have been capturing. Some of my cams have been in the same spots for years, and far fewer lions have passed them in the past year than most years. Recently, I had the excitement of a trio of mountain lions passing two trail cameras!

I saw this photo from my trail camera, and I expected it was just one mountain lion passing by.

Then, I saw this photo. Another set of eyes had appeared.

Then, I got very excited because yet another set of eyes had appeared to the right. Moreover, you can see the eye and body of another mountain lion on the left side of the kitten.

The kitten glanced back toward his/her family.

The kitten looked the other way...

... and then the kitten departed to follow mom.

I also captured footage of the mountain lions with a trail camera that records video. It is just so cool to see three mountain lions together! Check out the video!

The trio remained in one area for at least a few days so I suspect that they had prey cached nearby. I hope that we catch some more glimpses of them in the future!

The dance among the lion and scavengers at an elk carcass

I'm sure that some of you remember the story of the mountain lion who killed a cow elk on my friend's land that I talked about in two posts (Post 1 and Post 2). I set up trail cameras all around the carcass to capture footage of the lion and the scavengers who ate every last bit of the elk.

I haven't had a chance to tell you about the scavengers who moved in in the mid-day hours as well as after the lion abandoned the carcass on December 17. They included magpies, ravens, a golden eagle, and coyotes. The coyotes even howled occasionally!

I put footage of the scavengers together into a video that I thought that you might enjoy seeing. I think that a fascinating aspect of it is the interactions among the scavengers and the lion.

It was interesting to see how worried the coyotes were when they dared to go near the carcass during the phase when the lion was still nearby. The first coyote clip shows an example of that behavior. No doubt, the lion would kill a coyote he found the coyote eating his hard-earned elk meat.

I also enjoyed watching the magpies and ravens brazenly continue to eat while the coyote or golden eagle was on the carcass. Seeing a Golden Eagle was really a treat!

Then, in the last clip, I loved watching and hearing the coyote howling while at the carcass!

You can watch the short video here or at Youtube.

A Curious Mountain Lion

I know a clearing in the woods that mountain lions visit frequently. It's on a saddle of a ridge so it's a natural spot for them to cross the ridge. A huge old Ponderosa Pine tree spreads its limbs on that saddle, and mountain lions like to mark their territory by scraping (with their hind paws) in the pine needles under it.

I know all of this because I have had trail cameras in that spot for years. Last year, I started getting worried because my rate of mountain lion sightings had gone way down. I'd gotten no mountain lion photos at that site in about a year. I worried that the lion population had plummeted for some reason.

This was a photo of a mountain lion in that clearing.

Then, one day as I rode my mountain bike through the woods, a cylindrical object on the forest floor caught my eye. I stopped, thinking that it was trash that I should pick up. After I examined it, I saw that it was an electronic device made by a wildlife company. I also saw tooth marks in the neoprene sleeve covering it.

I brought it home and Googled it. To my surprise, it was a light-sensitive device that made animal calling noises when it was dark outside. My reading told me that it was frequently used by photographers to entice wildlife to visit their cameras.

I thought, "What the heck? I've scarcely gotten any mountain lion photos in the past year. It's worth trying it to see what happens.". I put it on that ridge saddle, under the Ponderosa Pine. At first, not much happened except that the darn thing burned through batteries at a surprising rate.

Then, I found a series of videos on one of the trail cams on that saddle. It was a mountain lion who was intrigued by the device.

I thought that it was cool to get to see so much behavior by the mountain lion as he checked out the device and eventually took it away! The funny part, to me, is that theft by a mountain lion is probably why the device was lying on the forest floor to start with (remember that I said it had teeth marks on it?). Now, the device is floating around in the forest again...

Enjoy the video!

More Mountain Lion Action

Yesterday was devoted mostly to trying to keep our black dog calm and not-too-unhappy. I can't blame him for feeling upset. He just went through this same thing so very recently. What he doesn't know is that this episode should be much shorter - assuming that the pathology reports are not bad.

In the meantime, I spent some time sorting through the 200 GB of footage that I have so far of animals eating the elk carcass. For today, I'll share mountain lion footage. No other mammals, like coyotes, dared to go near the carcass while the mountain lion was still interested in it.

In the video, you'll first see one of our favorite dog friends check out the carcass and try to eat a little of it before sprinting back to his human. Then, you'll see the mountain lion arrive for his second night of eating. The contrast between the Lab's size and the mountain lion's size is stunning to me.

The mountain lion was always very wary while at the carcass. He'd stop eating to scan his surroundings regularly. I'm not sure if he'd be so wary if he weren't close to humans. He did one bout of eating from nightfall until 7PM. Then he returned at 4AM and ate for an hour. I wonder if his umbilical hernia limits how much he can eat in one bout because it must hurt if his intestines get full.

His strength awes me. When he first arrived both times, it looked as if he tried to move the elk but couldn't pull it uphill. If it were a smaller prey item or if a secluded spot were downhill, I'm sure that the lion would have opted to move the carcass to a safer spot.

Finally, when he departed at 5AM, he covered the carcass with snow, using his mammoth paws to throw snow backward onto the carcass.

Enjoy the peek into a mountain lion's life in the video.

As the Mountain Lion World Turns

As many of you know, I adore following our wild cats: bobcats and mountain lions. Last summer, we had a mother mountain lion who had small kittens in our neck of the woods.

This was my first glimpse of one of them. The spotted kitten is in front of his mother.

Very soon, his sibling caught up and is by his mother's hind legs in the photo.

These photos were in a dark forested area. Just a short time later, the family passed through a brightly lit area where my cam captured color photos of them. In this photo, mom is just leaving the frame and a kitten is behind her.

The kitten dawdled a little, probably sniffing the tree - which is a tree that is frequently marked by bears.

That was the last that I saw of the family. In fact, my trail cams captured no photos of mountain lions for a long time - a fact that left me very concerned about our wild cats.

Now, many months later, mountain lions have returned to our area. I seem to be capturing photos of them at least once per week. Phew!

In the interim, the study that was following lions wearing GPS collars ended. The researchers tried to capture all the lions in the study last winter to remove their collars. They did a pretty good job although there is at least one lion in our neck of the woods who is still wearing a collar.

One pair that I've gotten photos of has intrigued me because it could be a kitten and a mother from that family photographed last summer. They may have moved to another niche in our area for the past year.

The first set of photos was of a youngish looking lion. He came up a hill toward my trail cam.

Like most young lions I've seen in this spot, the scents of the animal marking post next to him caused him to freeze and sniff. Note the very black "mustache" spot above his mouth - that's one sign that he's young.


Another sign is that his body doesn't look proportioned normally yet. His legs look too short for the rest of him.

Nonetheless, he looks extremely strong and healthy. He's about the right age to be nearing the end of his time with his mother. He's also about the right age to be one of those tiny kittens who we saw more than a year ago in the first photos of this post.

Later that evening, a larger lion who had the proportions of an adult walked past the trail cam very fast.

I suspect that this is his mother. At the kitten's age, the mother will leave him with the carcass of their last kill while she goes hunting for their next meal.

I really wish that I'd captured photos of them together. I will be watching and hoping that I do!

A Curious Mountain Lion

We had an exciting couple of days at a scent post in the forest nearby. The scent post is on a saddle of a ridge, and it has a huge Ponderosa Pine in the middle of it. It's been exceptionally quiet for months, and then there was suddenly a flurry of activity.

First, a very curious but seemingly timid mountain lion spent a few minutes checking out the site. He looked small from this point of view.

He sniffed around very carefully.

He paced in and out of the field of view. The he (or she - I don't know which) marked the ground behind the tree.

And then the lion walked onward. In this view, You can see that the lion was big but probably young. The bar on the inside of his/her front right limb is probably a vestige of kitten markings.

When I looked at more photos taken by that camera, I discovered that a small herd of elk had crowded into the clearing. One was a calf that must have been born very late this year because he still has spots! By this time of year, the calves' spots have usually disappeared.

I also saw that a red fox had come through the clearing. He looks tiny compared to the other animals who had been there.

I made a video of the mountain lion's almost two minutes prowling around the clearing which you can watch here or at Youtube.

Seeing that video made me smile!

A Young Cougar on the Prowl

You might remember that I managed to check a wildlife camera just before our really big snowstorm 9 days ago, and I discovered that a cougar (a.k.a. "mountain lion") had been there.

I wasn't too surprised about the cougar presence because the elk herd had been nearby as the storm arrived and after it. My widest angle lens captured only part of the big herd.

It took a week until I could check any other cameras due to the deep snow. When I did, I found out that the young cougar had stayed in the area for at least a couple of days. He visited another clearing where many cougars have left their scent marks over the years.

It was snowing as he arrived in the clearing, and you can see that snow had accumulated on his tail which he perpetually holds out behind him.

He spent some time sniffing around and then turned to leave. This photo shows why I think he or she is a young cougar. You can see faint bars on the upper inside of the front left leg. Those bars are usually present in cougar kittens but not adults. They can remain, barely visible, until the animal is about 2 years old.

My guess is that this animal is an independent young adult who is searching for a territory to call his/her own. It's possible that there's an open area (not claimed by other adult cougars) near us because cougar activity has fallen off dramatically in the past 4 months or so. I've wondered if one of our "resident" cougars was hurt or died.

In the clearing that this cougar visited on 2/1, I also have a camera that takes video. I combined all the trail cam stills and video into a compilation video for you that you can watch here or at Youtube.

The site where this cougar visited most recently is almost right on a route that Shyla and I use for snow biking - and it was during daylight. That's all the more reason for me to continually keep Shyla's recall and other training skills sharp!

Snowstorm and a Mountain Lion

So far, our snow storm hasn't lived up to the billing. It's snowed hard at times but it looks to me like we have only 6-8" of new snow. However, our local forecaster says that it will keep snowing overnight and through tomorrow.

Shyla and I had a snow bike outing this morning, in the midst of the falling flakes.

In areas where the snow has built up without melting all winter long, the depth is impressive.

Before big snow storms, the wildlife starts moving to get to places where they'll have food to eat. In the case of the deer and elk, that usually involves moving to lower elevations where the snow will be less deep. The elk herd, in particular, usually passes by our neck of the woods on their way downhill.

As the elk move, their predators set up to try to ambush them. Thus, I wasn't terribly surprised to see that a mountain lion was near our house this weekend.

This mountain lion visited a huge old Douglas fir that has a thick layer of pine needles under it. It is a common place for carnivores to mark as they pass through.

Like many before him, this lion marked, kicking backward with each huge hind paw and then urinating in the scrape he'd made.

A couple of bones linger in this clearing. Mountain lions have killed many deer and elk near here. The lion sniffed the bones.

Then, he noticed the soft red glow coming from my trail camera. He stared at it as he licked his lips.

He made a funny face as he pulled in his tongue.

He looked to his left, giving us a nice view of his heavily muscled body.

And then he departed.

We've had very few mountain lions come through our neck of the woods recently so this series of photos made me smile!!!

The "mountain lion clearing" looks very different now, buried under our new snow!

Sunshine, moose, and mountain lions!

Sunshine, finally!

It makes everything look more beautiful.

Shyla and I enjoyed playing in the forest in the light of the rising sun.

On our way to see the sunrise this morning, we managed to ride right past at least two moose without me seeing them. The Runner wasn't far behind, and he spotted them. Shyla and I were lucky that they let us pass. I'm sure that Shyla was aware of them but she has proven that she is *never* going to chase a moose. She wants to stay as far away from them as she can after our scary experiences.

The Mama Moose, this year's calf, and last year's calf ("Lefty") have been living in a small radius around our house. I see the cavities in the snow where they sleep each night. Can you imagine being able to sleep in the snow in sub-freezing temperatures night after night? Amazing.

The sheer number of moose that I've seen so far this autumn and winter (at least different six individuals) close to our house is incredible. I find myself wondering if our state will end up regretting their decision to introduce moose here almost 40 years ago. The population has gone wild, primarily because they have no natural predators. A mountain lion can't take down a healthy adult moose.

A comparison of how small a mountain lion is compared to a moose explains why. Here's a photo of a mountain lion passing my trail camera.

Now, here's a moose passing the same camera, mounted in exactly the same place. The moose absolutely dwarfs the mountain lion. I cannot imagine a mountain lion killing a healthy moose.

Our wildlife authorities have repeatedly refused to help wolves establish themselves in our state. Wolves, working as a pack, do prey on moose. The moose population explosion in our neck of the woods has me pondering what will happen to our ecosystem in the future. Will the moose eat every last aspen and willow? I'm sure that there will be cries for more human hunting of moose but, personally, I'd prefer having wolves here.

Back to less serious stuff - Shyla and I truly enjoyed sunshine today - after a couple of gray days. It was super cold but the sun rays were warm. The moose didn't reappear so we had a very relaxed outing.

It was my favorite kind of winter day - below freezing, sunny, and a bluebird sky! The sun made the snow crystals glitter.

I hope that all the people in the path of the east coast snowstorm can find a moment to see the beauty in the snow and to enjoy the way that life slows down when Mother Nature takes over. It's a more regular occurrence here - one that we've learned to enjoy, tucked warmly next to our crackling fire.

Happy Thursday!