I recently saw in a social media post by a friend that Spring is in the air. I responded that it doesn’t feel that way up here in the North Woods! We are still getting a few snow squalls daily and the cold and wind make it seem like the middle of winter to me.

None the less, I decided to take a few short walks on the country road where we live today because the sun was shining at least. Although it was crisp, I was rewarded twice today with unique wildlife sightings.

On my first walk, I happened to see a Bobcat cross the road in front of me about 25 yards and move into a shrubby field toward the south. I picked up my pace a bit and was able to catch a clear view of the cat and his “bobbed” tail before he/she vanished into the brush. Although we regularly hear and see all sorts of critters in the fields and woods around our home, the sighting of a Bobcat here was a first for me. Interestingly just a few years ago but well into warmer Spring weather I was walking in pretty much the same location when a black bear stepped out of the woods and crossed the road heading north. I not only didn’t speed up my walking pace at that time but came to a dead stop!

The Bobcat is a North American cat with two recognized subspecies, it ranges from southern Canada to central Mexico, including most of the contiguous United States. The bobcat is an adaptable predator that inhabits wooded areas, as well as semi-desert, urban edge, forest edge, and swampland environments. It remains in some of its original range, but populations are vulnerable to local extinction by coyotes and domestic animals. (We have loads of coyotes around here.) With a gray to brown coat, whiskered face, and black-tufted ears, the bobcat resembles the other species of the midsized genus Lynx. It is smaller on average than the Canada lynx, with which it shares parts of its range, but is about twice as large as the domestic cat. It has distinctive black bars on its forelegs and a black-tipped, stubby (or “bobbed”) tail, from which it derives its name.

Though the bobcat prefers rabbits and hares, it hunts insects, chickens, geese and other birds, small rodents, and deer. Prey selection depends on location and habitat, season, and abundance. Like most cats, the bobcat is territorial and largely solitary, although with some overlap in home ranges. It uses several methods to mark its territorial boundaries, including claw marks and deposits of urine or feces. The bobcat breeds from winter into spring and has a gestation period of about two months.

As I was finishing another short walk and about the enter our front door, I heard the low gurgling call of a Common Raven. Although the Raven isn’t all that uncommon in our area, we don’t see or hear them nearly as much as we see and hear crows.

The Common Raven, also known as the Northern Raven, is a large all-black passerine bird. Found across the Northern Hemisphere, it is the most widely distributed of all corvids. There are at least eight subspecies with little variation in appearance, although recent research has demonstrated significant genetic differences among populations from various regions. It is one of the two largest corvids, alongside the thick-billed raven, and is possibly the heaviest passerine bird; at maturity, the common raven averages 25 inches in length and 2 1/2 pounds) in mass. Common ravens can live up to 21 years in the wild, a lifespan surpassed among passerines by only a few species. Young birds may travel in flocks but later mate for life, with each mated pair defending a territory.

So, windy and cold or not…I enjoyed the brief encounter with a couple of unique north woods species.