I set up more cameras on our property in the woods a few months ago and over Christmas weekend caught more shots of our local mountain lions. Unfortunately they walked a bit too close to the camera so I didn’t get the best shots (I’ve since moved this particular camera to a better vantage point) but still these are by far the best mountain lion shots we’ve gotten yet.
Best we can tell, this is a mother with two one-year or so old cubs. I’ve included a few shots from the series.
After a 6 month battle with cancer, Bess's fight ended today after a nice hike in the woods and much love and comfort. She was easily the toughest dog we’ve ever had and our next dog will almost assuredly be an American Staffordshire Terrier in her memory. We are all sad but it was time.
After a good week of rain, Renée and I went up to our property in the woods this morning for our weekly hike. While our trail camera didn't catch any new pictures of interest, Renée noticed this (and many other) footprints in the mud on the upper part of our property. It is indeed a mountain lion footprint and from one that is approximately the same size as the one captured on camera. Even more interestingly, there were a few smaller prints in the same place suggesting that it's a female with a cub. Time to set up another camera!
So far this winter has been pretty quiet on the animal spotting front — it seemed like all the rain was keeping the critters away. It was with very low expectations that I just downloaded the photos off our trail cams from the last few weeks only to find a lion walking through the dark.
It looks to be about the same size as the last one (although not being even close to an expert on these things, I welcome anyone else's opinion). Either way, so cool! Renée and I did smell a rotting carcass on the property today not too far from the location of this trail cam so maybe our lion is well fed.
It's a very sad night in the Anker household.
A few months ago, I purchased two trail cameras for our property in Woodside. We've always wondered what roams the trails after we leave and we've been moving the cameras around to various junction points as we figured out where the animals roam. For the first few weeks we saw nothing but finally happened upon two good places for spotting deer. Nice, but I can drive along 280 and see those.
The cameras have SD cards and Renee and I hike the property every weekend so we switch the cards out once a week. Today's haul included our first shot of one of the local mountain lions. So exciting! The cameras (which have come such a long way since I played with them 5 or 6 years ago) now have an infra-red mode and these pictures were taken right at dusk: a bit bright for infra-red but too dark for the regular camera hence the washed out shot. The clock on the camera isn't set exactly right and I'm not sure of the offset, but the pictures were taken at about 7:30pm. It's an eerie effect but now that we know there's at least one lion on the trails, we'll keep searching for a better shot.
Renee estimates that it's a probably a juvenile female, based on its size. We were able to compare the animal's scale with shots of our dog in the same position and while it's bigger than our 65 pound Staffordshire Terrier, it's not that much bigger.
For comparison purposes, here's the same location during the day, taken by the non-infra-red camera.
