Aptos Mountain Lion Characters

As many of you have noticed I am completely and utterly fascinated by mountain lions, pumas, cougars, catamounts, or what ever you like to call them (did the webpage url and logo give that away???). It has always been my fascination getting pictures of them and seeing them in the wild. Though i have been able to get images, I have never seen one in nature (how is that possible you ask — camera traps!).

As anyone with any obsession, I can’t get enough information about them. Absolutely everything interests me about them including home range size, territoriality, density, prey species, den sites, when cubs leave their mother’s home range, and the list just keeps going on. I am telling you this as a forewarning for future posts under the Project Puma heading that will have anything and everything to do with mountain lions whether that is information or pictures just in case there is someone else as interested in this beautiful cat as I am.

This post is also supposed to serve as an introduction to the cat(s) of the area I camera trap in Aptos near Santa Cruz in the Monterey Bay area. As of right now there are two camera traps out there and I have gotten mountain lion pictures on three different occasions. I am not completely sure whether it is the same cat or different cats so I figured I’d ask you guys. Here are the three pictures followed by close-ups in the same order.

Juvenile Mountain Lion Walking at Night

Taken on June 8th, 2010 at 4:35am

Taken December 25, 2010 at 9:31pm

Taken December 25, 2010 at 9:31pm

Taken March 5th, 2011 at 6:32am

Taken March 5th, 2011 at 6:32am

Juvenile Mountain Lion at Night-Sebastian Kennerknecht - Close-upMountain Lion at Night-Sebastian Kennerknecht-Close upMountain Lion walking over log close up-Sebastian Kennerknecht

Is it all the same cat, I really don’t know. In other cat species researchers use the spotting pattern which is unique to each cat to identify them. For Puma concolor (the scientific name of the mountain lion meaning cat of one color) this isn’t really an option. What I was looking at is the black marking around the mouth, the black whisker markings, and the shape of the ears. Nothing leads me to say that its the same cat or different cats (in the second image, that is a tick in the ear, sadly not something to identify the cat by) — do you see something I am not? One thing for sure is that the second cat is much bulkier than the first, but the images were also captured months apart.

An interesting thing to note are the few faint slightly darker spots on the back leg of the first image, which could give us some clues of its age. Puma kittens are completely spotted loosing these marks as they become older. By ten months, the markings are difficult to see except on the hindquarters. The eyes turn from a light blue as kittens to yellow brown as adults (this change is complete by sixteen months). Young pumas are independent around 15 months (with a range of 10 to 18 months) leaving their mother’s territory and searching for their own. Based on the fact that I had not captured an image of a puma before this individual (for a period of 8 months) and its morphology it leads me to believe that this must be a juvenile looking for its own territory. If the second and third image are of the same cat, then I am glad to know its doing well in its new home!

Utilizing your Local Botanical Garden or Arboretum

Botanical Gardens and Arboretums are amazing places to not only visit but also to photograph. It is always fascinating to me to see plants from all around the world in such a small area. How amazing is it to wander from South Africa to Australia in just a few yards. From Proteas to Pincushions. It doesn’t even matter at what time of year you go, something will be in bloom.

Living in Santa Cruz provides the amazing opportunity of visiting the UCSC Arboretum, a deeply under-appreciated place. It contains the largest concentration of southern hemisphere plants in the northern hemisphere. When I photograph in these floral collections I tend to shoot in a macro-style, concentrating on single plants, often on single flowers. This is mainly to eliminate distracting backgrounds and since the plants are not in their native habitat showing the landscape in the background is not beneficial most times.

Here are a few examples of the types of pictures I am talking about:

Pincushion (Leucospermum sp), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Pincushion (Leucospermum sp), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Pincushion (Leucospermum sp), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Pincushion (Leucospermum sp), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Pincushion (Leucospermum sp), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Pincushion (Leucospermum sp), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Still unknown plant to me...., UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Buttonbush (Berzelia lanuginosa), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Spiral Aloe (Aloe polyphylla), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Spiral Aloe (Aloe polyphylla), UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Then you always have the option of getting more abstract pictures. This is the advantage of plants over animals, they don’t move too far. The picture below was taken at the UC Berkeley Botanical Garden. I loved how the light was coming through the fern fronds. I first took images that were in focus but I really liked the shape of the leaves so I decided to manually put them out of focus, having nothing in the image be sharp. It’s different, but I like it.

Fern fronds out of focus, Berkeley Botanical Garden, Berkeley, California

Fern fronds out of focus, Berkeley Botanical Garden, Berkeley, California

Finally, all the plants attract wildlife as well, so keep an eye out for movement. Hummingbirds are frequent visitors to gardens so they are attracted to these ‘super gardens’ in even higher numbers. This male Allen’s Hummingbird was photographed in Santa Cruz. He would continuously land on this perch and then chase off any other males intruding into his space. Every time he was off chasing a rival I crept closer, stopping when he would arrive back at his perch. I wanted to still include some of the amazingly colorful background created by all the plants so I stopped when I was about 10 feet away. It is one of my earliest photographs, but I still love it.

Allen's Hummingbird calling, UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

Allen’s Hummingbird calling, UCSC Arboretum, Santa Cruz, California

So go out and find your local botanical paradise, you will be amazed by what you find!

*If you are interested in purchasing any of the pictures displayed in this post, please check out my fine prints page for pricing.*

Extended Bio

I figured I would let you know a little bit more about myself, especially since most of this information is probably already scattered around the internet anyway. I was born on June 12, 1985 in Munich, Germany – yes, presents are always welcome :). I have an older brother (a world class sailor) and a younger sister (an amazing artist). My interest in wildlife began before I can remember, and animals hold an extremely special place in my heart. The love of the outdoors and nature probably arose from the local lakes, hiking the in Alps, and our backyard pond. The beauty and diversity of animals became really apparent to me at the Munich Hellabrunn Zoo. I have mixed feelings about zoos now, I really hate seeing the animals caged up, but I do think they can provide the benefit of getting people excited about nature to the point where they want to preserve it.

One of my favorite places to go at the zoo was the Raubtiergehege (Carnivore Cages). It was a concrete building with steel bars, and it stank, really really badly. I loved that smell though, it meant that no one else would be there and that I was surrounded by true predators. It housed the lions, tigers, and leopards. Thinking back, it really was a very bad place for those amazing creatures to be, but it made me fall in love with animals, specifically all the wildcats. The structure has since then been brought down and newer, better exhibits have been built for these carnivores. I do still go back and visit the Munich Zoo, which brins back memories of my early childhood.

I moved to the United States when I was ten years old. The move was extremely hard on us children. We left our best friends back in Germany and moved to a country we knew nothing about, least of all spoke its language. After a few years though we were speaking English fluently and started to really appreciate our new home. For myself, the vast wilderness of the States is just breathtaking and the biodiversity is unbelievable. California has so many different ecosystems and did I mention its on the coast! We lived eight hours away from it by car in Germany, now we could walk there.

After attending a private German-American school for three years, I went to Mission San Jose High School in Fremont. Then I went on to study Behavioral Ecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. The layout of the campus, encompassed by nature was the perfect fit for me. In my second year I really started to get interested in photography again (before then I just dabbled around) and I would spend many hours looking for bobcats. Maybe I should say that I got better at tracking here than photography, I really didn’t take too many pictures since I only saw two bobcats for a few seconds each at my time at UCSC.

Then I bought my first digital SLR, a Pentax ist*Ds. I started taking hundreds, better yet, thousands of images and I really started to learn how to operate the camera and how to achieve the kind of images I was imagining. A couple years later I switched to a Canon system and really started to explore more photographic possibilities. I am most definitely still learning, and feel that I always will be, but that’s part of the fun of it. Photographically I am always excited to try new things!

At this point I am focusing my photography on the endangered wildlife that lives in the area, to try and showcase them and their need for conservation. I am currently in the last stages of photographing for an exhibit at the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History called Endangered Neighbors. It is a project close to my heart, I approached the museum four years ago asking them if they would be interested in an exhibit that covers the threatened and endangered wildlife of the central Coast, highlighting their natural history, why they are endangered, what people are doing to save them, and what the general public can do to protect them. They agreed and we are finally starting the development phase of the exhibit. Look for it in summer 2011!

As time progresses there will be more events and happenings, but for those you will have to read future blog posts…