I took the day fully off today. No work, not even emails. No childcare, not even taxiing them around. Instead, I went for a long hike at Jenner Headlands Preserve, out on the Sonoma Coast, north and west of most places.
I saw lots of good birds, an embarrassing amount of beautiful scenery, too many flowers and butterflies and such. Badger burrows, deer tracks, etc. But the clear highlight for me was a several minute look at a hunting bobcat.
When I first spotted it, near the top of the Raptor Ridge Trail, above Hawk Hill, beyond the Falcon's Fairway and within sight of Peregrine Point, it was standing still, a few hundred feet from me, silhouetted against the sky. I couldn't tell what it was until I had it in focus and zoomed in.
I braced myself against a fence post and stayed as still and quiet as I could in the whistling wind. It stood quite still for a minute or two, then pounced, paws together on landing, like a Lynx (which is in the same genus) crushing a vole's snow tunnel.
It then spent several minutes slowly sauntering off along the ridge-line toward the trees, pausing occasionally to glower at me.
