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Lynx Links
updated: May 16, 2012, 7:31 AM
By Steve McGovern
I've watched with interest (and some wonder) the reports and pictures of bobcats sighted in and around
Santa Barbara. Many sightings were reported at Lake Los Carneros a few months ago, and though I
spend a lot of time there with my camera, I never saw one. I saw, on Edhat, the photos of the bobcats
in the back yard of a home. I thought, "How cool. Large predators running around in our
neighborhoods. Very Wild Kingdom-ish." I'd never seen a bobcat in real life, and I wanted to.
The hill behind my house has hosts a variety of wildlife. Dozens of different birds from songbirds to
road runners. About a billion quail live there. Rabbits and gophers are plentiful. Too plentiful, in my
opinion. Probably, as a direct result of the plentiful little rodents, I've seen coyote there a number of
times. I know the threat they pose to our pets, and, in fact, I believe coyotes ate our little dog shortly
after we moved here from a less coyote populated area (Washington), but I am all in favor of their
predation on rabbits and gophers.
Then, yesterday, I saw the cat pictured below… from my kitchen window! I saw him/her the first time
early in the morning. Didn't have my camera. By the time I did, he was gone. Then, last night, I looked
up, and there he was. So I took the pictures below. I sent them to some friends, and I got a little push-
back when I identified it as a "bobcat." Some wanted to think it was a lynx. So, I looked up the
difference on line, and this little description jumped out at me. According to HowStuffWorks.com, a
bobcat is a "medium-sized cat with long, tufted ears and a short, bobbed tail" while a lynx is, "a
medium-sized cat with long, tufted ears and a short, bobbed tail." I still maintain it is a bobcat, since
lynx have bigger feet (like snowshoes) for walking on snow and tend to live in areas where they can eat
snow shoe rabbits.
So, I finally saw, and even better, photographed, a bobcat (unless it's a lynx). In my back yard. Very
neat!
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