Mountain Lion, Warbler Pond, Los Alamos NM (9/15/2015 7:55 pm)

When I checked the camera trap on the morning of 9/15/2015 I was very hopeful that the cub that had walked by and had not taken a drink on the morning of 9/14/2015 would come by for a drink now that the pond had been located. Unfortunately, no cougar came by that morning leading me to believe that the cub had moved on. I also wondered where the mother was. A cub of that size should be accompanied by the mother. When I checked the camera trap on the morning of 9/16/2015 I was in for a big surprise. A much larger cougar, most likely the mother had come in for drink right after sunset on 9/15/2015 at 7:55 pm which is 38 hours after the cub had visited! I'm guessing this is the mother since she is still smaller than the huge male that visited last September (Click) captured by a critter cam and the small cub (Click) that visited on 9/14/2015 likely would still be accompanied by the mother. I couldn't believe it. I got 26 great photos of this beautiful, elusive predator with perfect light, focus at the scenic warbler pond. Perhaps they were hanging around since they had a kill stashed nearby. This is probably the hardest I've had to work for a photo but it was defintely worth it. It has been great to photograph all the other critters that visit our area and to get nice photos of the cougar with the critter cam but this sequence of photos was what I had always dreamed of! Below are some of the highlights. Here she comes with that intimidating approach that only the apex predator can pull off:

Here she is getting a much needed drink with a great shot of the whiskers and tongue!

You can even see the water droplets falling from her mouth as she drinks.

Once she sits down, she looks so much smaller than when fully stretched out.

Here she looks off to the left probably because one of the critter cam flashes went off catching her attention.

This is one of my favorite shots where she looks right at the camera while licking her chops. If you look closely you can see some of her bottom teeth.

She looked around for a while and spent about 5 minutes at the pond. I was hoping the cub would come in too but never did. I later compared the sizes of the two cougars and they definitely were very different in size.

Her front paws are enormous and knowing the scale of the pond, are about 6 inches across.

Time to get back on the prowl.

Another one of my favorite photos with the full body in view showing she spans the entire width of warbler pond and has an enormous tail.

I put together a composite of mother and cub together to confirm that their sizes are quite different. The mother is about 6 feet long from nose to tail! You can also see the underside of her enormous paw. The cub in comparison has just as big a head but the length of the tail and body is less. Since I had photos of the cub, mother, sunrise the day the cub visited (shot at multiple exposures), I could put together a high resolution High Dynamic Range (HDR) photo of the scene that highights the amazing setting of Warbler Pond that lies on the edge of Barranca Canyon! What's amazing to me is that since the cougar visits took place at 6:00 am and 8:00 pm, sunrise and sunset were actually within about 30 minutues of making the lighting of this scene a reality with the foreground fill flashed and the background with natural light. Although perhaps since cougars are thanksfully very shy, maybe they wouldn't approach the pond once things brighten up. Although day time visits elsewhere have been recorded.

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