{"id":10591,"date":"2019-02-22T18:30:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-22T18:30:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/?p=10591"},"modified":"2019-02-22T18:30:12","modified_gmt":"2019-02-22T18:30:12","slug":"bobcat-tracks-in-the-snow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/22\/bobcat-tracks-in-the-snow\/","title":{"rendered":"Bobcat Tracks In The Snow"},"content":{"rendered":"

BY HANNES THUM<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"
Photo credit: Hannes Thum<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I have been spending a lot of time this winter looking at bobcat tracks.<\/p>\n

I keep coming across them, and I always take note when I do. In a canyon west of here, I have skied alongside bobcat tracks in the snow only to return the next week and find that newer bobcat tracks were walking within my ski tracks.<\/p>\n

In that area, this winter, the tracks keep appearing.<\/p>\n

A while back, I was out on one of the long, windy ridges above that canyon when I came across some fresh tracks in the snow. An adult and a juvenile had been traveling together, as they tend to do until the young cat is old enough to forge its own path. They had come up out of the north-facing woods on one side of the ridge, and had followed the ridge upwards, just as I was doing. They stayed on the wind-stiffened snow that made for easier travel (bobcats, unlike their cousins, the lynx, don\u2019t have very big feet and struggle a bit in deep snow).<\/p>\n

I skied alongside the tracks as they climbed higher and higher, until they disappeared under newly wind-drifted snow from that morning, but never saw the cats themselves, even though I was probably just a few hours behind them.<\/p>\n

Lots of tracks, but no cat sightings.<\/p>\n

Because I know that bobcats are pretty hard to spot (and because I like seeing what kinds of creatures move through the woods when I am not around, anyhow), I like to put motion-sensing trail cameras out in the woods. One of the animals that I most hope to get photos of are bobcats.<\/p>\n

Pulling a memory card out of a trail camera that has been out in the wilderness for a while always comes with anticipation. There is always the hope that the camera captured a great photo of a rare animal. It\u2019s not easy to do\u2014I have left some cameras out for months without a single good photo being taken. The most common case, honestly, is that I end up with a card full of uninspiring pictures of the empty woods (a pesky branch blowing in the wind can trigger the camera shutter thousands of times) with a few images of squirrels jumping past or maybe a few deer, too close to or too far from the camera to reveal much. Despite my best plans, it is still hard to capture good images.<\/p>\n

Occasionally, though, that tiny little plastic memory card contains some amazing photographs. And, when we pulled a card a few weeks ago out of a camera not far from where I had followed the bobcat tracks along the ridge, it was both surprising and not surprising to see the photo of the bobcat that the camera had captured \u2014there was a bobcat, stepping carefully, head up and eyes alert, through the woods. That elusive creature, finally, caught on film.<\/p>\n

Hannes Thum is a Wood River Valley native and has spent most of his life exploring what our local ecosystems have to offer. He currently teaches science at Sun Valley Community School<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY HANNES THUM I have been spending a lot of time this winter looking at bobcat tracks. I keep coming across them, and I always take note when I do. In a canyon west of here, I have skied alongside bobcat tracks in the snow only to return the next week and find that newer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10592,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_pvb_checkbox_block_on_post":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,34,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-commentary","category-science-place","category-slider"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10591\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10592"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/woodriverweekly.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}