[ChuckM]

Z - Thank you for the nice comments. No, we don't have a dog but I'm very good friends with my friend's dogs and I watch our neighbors indoor cat while they are gone on trips. Sounds like you have a very interesting variety of wildlife and a variety of habitat too. olderthanIusedtobe - thank you ... I never thought about charging admission I do feel very fortunate for the amount and variety of wildlife that we do get to see. It's not really like a zoo, unfortunately. We can go long stretches without seeing anything larger than a gray squirrel (not to say we don't really enjoy them.)

[Karen²]

[ChuckM]

Thanks K2 ... you are too kind. You can come over to my backyard for free anytime. Sorry, there a no T-shirts but I do have a rake you can use while you're here ... Yup, someone went out and played on this beautiful day (photographing short-eared owls) and was reminded of the needed yard work on return. Maybe tomorrow ...

[Flower Sniffer]

Chuck, I can't get over the bobcats. How often are they out there? What do you think is attracting them?

[ChuckM]

FS - I'm very happy you enjoy my bobcat photos. They are a very rare and special treat for me to see and photograph. Last year I only had three opportunities to photograph them. One set was the first group in this thread and the other two were posted here and here. There are other times that I do see them, last year was about 5, but it is either too brief or too dark to photograph. I have gone a whole year in the past without seeing any and no sighting this year ... yet! The time we had multiple bobcats in the yard I think their den was actually close by. We saw them a lot but some of our neighbors didn't appreciate them as much as me. They would send out these scathing "homeowner association alerts" advising everyone to keep their pets and children indoors and call animal control authorities immediately when you see them. Really lame! I'm sure it is the bird and squirrel feeders that attract them to the yard.

Just a quick funny story about a sighting I couldn't photograph. We hosted a family reunion fun day and BBQ one summer. There were 8 of us adults playing Bocce Ball on the lawn while 5 kids aged 4 and up were running around in the yard and one toddler with 2 adults up on the deck. My sister threw the "jack", similar to but smaller than a cue ball, for our next round when out of the woods came Bob right up to the jack and sniffed and batted it a couple times. I said, "well there's Bob". I wish I had a picture of the look on my sister's face. Basically all eyes! Then Bob ran back in the woods and my sister headed for the wine. It was really the highlight of the day.

[furthur]

[ChuckM]

Bobcats can certainly be very shy at times and don't want anything to do with people and their cameras. Other times, just like kittys, they can be very aloof and not be bothered by people at all as long as they don't get too close or present any kind of threat. My next door neighbors on both sides are very wildlife friendly and we all watch out for sightings and call each other when something really interesting is happening. One of the main knickered up neighbors is 3 houses down and he got himself a labradoodle who he thinks should be the whole neighborhoods pet. That really hasn't had an impact on Bob or the coyotes but has significantly lowered our sightings of these ...

Volunteer landscaper with two trainees

[half fast]

Chuck... you have an awesome backyard full of critters I have two bobcats that I know of that live out here right before the earth drops off... One looks like the photos you have posted and the other is a darker coloring. I was fortunate enough to get fairly close to the darker one on a run one morning but he/she wanted nothing to do with me. He/she did keep its head turned and eyes on me as I ran towards it and as it crossed the street and ran into the woods. It was a very fun experience...

[olderthanIusedtobe]

At least one of my bobcat sightings and my lynx sighting were from my car. In both cases they stopped not far off the road and looked at me as I drove by. Actually I slowed to a stop and looked at them, too. Speaking of healthy coyotes the most robust looking specimens I ever saw were on the Eastern side of the Sierras near Bishop, CA. Saw a couple of them trotting around during the middle of the day. Also saw a pine marten dragging a trout that was almost as big as it was. It was a couple hundred feet up from a lake. I'm not sure if martens are capable of catching fish, so I was curious if it stole it from a fisherman.

[ChuckM]

Yesterday morning I was pleasantly surprised by these three deer that were in our backyard. At first, I spotted them running to a wooded corner of our yard and then they slowly started to walk where the video begins. It looks like one of them has the dreaded Eurasian Louse problem.

[Steve]

At my old house in Marysville we had a gang of three deer that would meander along the creek on the border of our property. We also had a couple of beavers that felled a couple smaller trees in that creek. We also saw some kind of muskrat in the water on occasion. We also had numerous visits from a heron that liked to hang out in the creek. In our new house in Bothell I don't see anything more exotic than a squirrel, though I have seen heron in the nearby creek on occasion.

[ChuckM]

I thought some of you might be interested that I took these latest pictures of a bobcat in our backyard about 1 hour ago. First sighting this year ... I just walked out on the deck with my binoculars to have a look around and there he was sleeping under one of our trees. You can see he really didn't care for me to wake him up ...

Not a happy kitty!

[olderthanIusedtobe]

Cool Bob is back. Glad you brought this thread back up to the top, I was just thinking about it today. Twice in the last 2 or 3 weeks when I go for a quick lunch walk from my work (near Woodland Park) I've seen a raccoon. I'm pretty sure it was the same one both times. He has a very pronounced limp, won't hardly put weight on his rear right leg. I didn't notice the first time but most of his tail is missing as well. He must have a story to tell of what happened. Anyway I'm glad to see it again several weeks later, obviously it's surviving in spite of it's injury. It doesn't move real fast but doesn't appear to be sickly or weak or malnourished. This is in a residential neighborhood. Probably lots of easy food sources and not much in the way of predators, so he could be okay.

[Flower Sniffer]

Bob does look a little annoyed! Hope the raccoon is okay. It's so sad to see them injured when you can't help.

[ChuckM]

I am very thrilled to see Bob is back. I let our neighbors know so they are on the "Bob Watch" too. Makes me wonder how long he was sleeping back there and where else he would have been visible. Really drives home how lucky it is to see Bob let alone get any photos. I took a detailed look at the fur pattern on top of the head (between the ears) and compared to all three photo shoots from last year. They appear to be four different individuals. The photo sessions were separated by a fair amount of time too. I hate to see any injured wildlife as well. It is particularly bad if it effects their mobility.