Bobcat!

We walk through the displays in the Point Reyes National Seashore visitors center, checking out the dioramas and taxidermy.  "Come take a look," says a ranger, "a bobcat." We rush to the window and there it is in the distance, slinking through a field. Its fur blends with the grey, dead grass from last year. Fresh green growth carpets below. The bobcat moves slowly, sliding into hunting poses like a house cat.

A couple of times it seems near pouncing, but eventually it settles low in the grass. Once it is low and still it is very hard to see. After a few minutes, we head out on a walk in the mossy douglas fir forest that borders the field.

After the walk, heading to the car on the other side of the visitors center, we see the bobcat again. This time it strides across a field right in front of us, maybe 30 feet away. My heart quickens. I feel myself holding my eyes as wide as I can trying to take in this sight. The bobcat sits, glances our way unconcerned, then crosses into the woods.

This bobcat seemed to be about the size of a house cat and a half. Bobcats live through most of North America, and vary quite a bit in size. They range from one to two feet tall at the shoulder and from about 15 to 40 pounds. Their colors also very quite a bit. I had never noticed the splashes of white on a bobcat's ears before this encounter.

The bobcat is a creature of edges. It prefers places  where many types of habitats meet, such as the area around the Point Reyes visitor center where fields meet forests, with riparian stream areas and rocky outcrops interspersed. We saw ours in mid afternoon, but bobcats are primarily crepuscular—active at dawn and dusk. Spatial and temporal edges are rich in life: think of the abundance of creatures in tidal habitats, the way a break in the forest is often the place where the flurry of birdlife appears, the migrating creatures that come at the boundaries between winter and spring or summer and fall.

A bobcat eat mostly squirrels, ground squirrels and rabbits, but will also eat mice, amphibians, and even insects and fruit. This is similar to the diet of a coyote, and apparently the two species are often in competition. Coyotes have increased in Point Reyes in recent decades, but this has not caused a decline in the bobcat population. Perhaps the two have settled into slightly different niches here. On our way out of the park a couple of days later we saw this hunter too.

Bobcats evolved 1.8 million years ago, not so long in evolutionary terms. They have faced threats from habitat destruction and from fur hunting, but their populations are now stable in most parts of their range. Just a couple of months ago, bobcat hunting was banned across California.

LINKS:
Point Reyes National Seashore information about bobcats
Smithsonian Nation Zoo information about bobcats
Point Reyes National Seashore