Colorado Nature Narratives

Frequent readers of my blog may be wondering what happened to the mother bobcat and her kittens that I wrote about earlier this summer. Our westside Colorado Springs neighborhood proved to be a good wildlife habitat for the bobcat family.

The mother bobcat successfully raised all 4 of her kittens in our neighbor’s (the Bracketts) backyard until the kittens were ready to move to a new territory. The kittens practiced climbing trees, and as they got older, climbed the Bracketts’ backyard fence to follow their mother, probably to learn how to hunt squirrels and rabbits. On hot days, the kittens stayed in their den until early evening. All of our neighbors were alerted about the bobcat family, and there were no negative encounters between “our” wildcat and pets or people. Soon after the first week of July, the mother bobcat and her kittens left “the nursery” and haven’t been seen since. I still miss them. Many of my neighbors also observed the mother bobcat during her 10-week stay in our neighborhood and we were all fascinated by this glimpse of one of Colorado’s most beautiful species of wildlife.

Mother Bobcat in early July

To read earlier posts about the bobcats, click on the “Bobcat” category.

Photo credit: Les Goss

It has been one week since our last sighting of “the backyard bobcat.” On that day, May 17, the bobcat surprised us at 7:00 p.m. Right after dinner, my son exclaimed, “It’s the bobcat!”

The bobcat was sitting down with its back to us, about 15 feet from the sliding glass door to our sideyard. While my husband Les Goss rushed for the camera, my son and I noted how similar the wildcat looked to a really big house cat. We also noticed the prominent black and white markings on the back of its ears. The bobcat’s triangle-shaped ears are tipped in black with a white rectangle shape at the base of each ear. The bobcat then began to move, and for several minutes was out of sight on the other side of our deck.

Then it jumped up onto our fence.

And looked into the neighbor's yard.

It marked territory in 3 locations in the neighbor's yard and covered up its scat.

Then the bobcat leaped back up our 5.5' fence.

And back down into our yard.

It didn't take much foliage for the bobcat to begin to disappear. Its protective coloration definitely works.

We have seen the bobcat 8 times in the last 5 weeks:
April 16 at 4 p.m.
April 18 at 6 p.m.
May 8 at 2 p.m.
May 9 at 9 a.m.
May 10 at 9:30 a.m.
May 12 at 10:30 a.m.
May 13 at 9:00 a.m.
May 17 at 7:00 p.m.

Perhaps the bobcat ranged through our yard on other days but we didn’t look out the window at just the right time to see him.

So when will the bobcat reappear in our backyard? That is the question.

For more information about bobcats in general and this particular Colorado Springs bobcat, please visit my two previous posts dated April 22 and May 12. Les Goss, my husband, took all the bobcat photos. Thanks, Les!