I did! I did taw a puddy tat!

My sister and I did hike the Farmington Canal Heritage Trail again this morning, and the weather was pretty nice, if a bit cloudy, but we didn’t see anything remarkable, and I barely took a picture. Instead, the big excitement came yesterday evening when she spotted this gorgeous creature slinking along the edge of my folks’ yard. For those of you unfamiliar with those black-and-white ears and that short tail, this is my very first image of a bobcat (Lynx rufus), aka wildcat, bay lynx, or red lynx. It was barely bigger, though certainly heftier, than my folks’ large house cat.

I did immediately try to take a picture with my phone, but it was at least 50 yards away, and thankfully my camera was just inside the house, so I bolted in to grab it. By the time I came back out, the cat had moved on a bit, but my sister pointed to where it had gone, and I found it just as it pounced into some weeds to catch some small rodent. Here’s a picture with the rodent mostly concealed by the grass to spare your tender eyes.

The rodent was gone in less than a minute, and then the cat continued its prowl. My sister, the vet, confirms from my pictures that this is a female, and she never did let me capture an image of more than just the side of her face. I checked on iNaturalist, and I found that they have been spotted in Wisconsin, but the closest sighting to Milwaukee was in Muskego, so I don’t have much hope of seeing one in Estabrook Park any time soon. Thank goodness for occasional visits to Cheshire, eh? Just look at that paw she has!

Anyway, so as not to leave you with just those three bobcat pictures, as amazing as they are, here’s another look at the belted kingfisher over the Quinnipiac River yesterday morning.

Here’s another look at some of the dozens of mute swans on the Broad Brook Reservoir on Saturday. They appear to be mobbing a great blue heron, but everyone just minded their own business, and perhaps the heron has learned that swans can’t be pushed around as it seems that cormorants can.

Here’s one of the cedar waxwings I mentioned, and I don’t know if this is a youngster who hasn’t yet grown in its fancy tail feathers with a yellow stripe across the tips, an adult who is in the middle of a molt, or if something else is going on, but it’s still a pretty bird, nevertheless.