Bobcat – Making a comeback

As I have mentioned in a previous post, we have great fun observing the wildlife in this rural area. Our house sits in the middle of 90 acres (thus, My90Acres), and is a good mix of fields, streams and woods. The county I live in is very rural and has an abundance of wildlife.

We move our deer cam around and I check the SD card every couple of weeks. It’s always great fun to see what we’ve “caught.” Its latest location is near our drive where it crosses a creek on a culvert. Animals are a little lazy and will take the easy path across the culvert rather than wade through the creek so this location gets them going both across the creek and along the creek. The cam is triggered automatically and records both day and night with the infrared part. The animals can’t see it flash at night but they can hear the camera click. Some of them come right up to the camera and I’m as likely to get a closeup of a deer nose as a flock of birds in the day.

This past month the camera recorded all kinds of deer, foxes, two cats I’ve never seen in daylight, turkeys, squirrels, coyotes, rabbits, possums, birds of all kinds, my dog, and cars entering and leaving the property. To my delight, I also recorded this large male bobcat this month. I haven’t seen him since last year so was glad to observe him again. Based on comparing him to the size of my dog, I guess he’s about 30-34 pounds which is about tops for a male. Bobcats have been protected in Indiana for a while now but they may come off the protected list soon as their population has grown. They eat rabbits, possums, rats, and other small animals. Oh, and chickens. Not so good. Nevertheless, it’s so nice to know nature is thriving in the not quite wilderness. On the other hand, I really don’t want to record a mountain lion or bear in this area – as has been reported. That would be a little too scary for my taste.