Unusual mountain lion behavior

[DouglasVB]

My parents live at 6,000 ft in the central Sierra Nevada out here in California. They've had at least a foot of snow on the ground continuously since Thanksgiving (generally 2-3 ft of snow on the ground but sometimes it gets down to 1 ft between storms). All the deer and other game head to lower elevations in the winter and the mountain lions follow them down.

That is... until yesterday. My dad saw a very large and very healthy mountain lion saunter down their driveway and walk across the snow through the meadow in front of their house before disappearing into the woods. It did not seem to care one bit that my dad was standing on their porch watching it.

A hummingbird also came and said hello to my parents yesterday. Usually hummingbirds leave the mountains around October and don't show up again until May or June.

This is a very odd winter.

Here's a still image from one of their security cameras. The mountain lion is circled in red.

 

[Cocarlisle]

Curious if there are Wolves in that area or new to that area

 

[mosdefjeff]

There were grey wolves in the sierras, haven’t had traceable populations for like 100 years IIRC.

Starting to see grey wolves in Northern Colorado, though! Sightings in Kremmling over the past year or so.

I have seen mountain lions in deeper snow, just not quite as regularly. Cold is generally what pushes mammals down in elevation, or necessarily deep snow.

We have sizable populations of elk and deer staying above 10k feet on the regular in Colorado for the entire winter. It’s been a strange decade of winters.