Laguna Coast Wilderness Park - Bobcat Sighting

[RichardK]

We hiked a 13 mile loop around Laguna Coast Wilderness Park today. Now, I didn't take my camera because the 8 year old batteries have stopped holding a charge for very long. I don't want to replace them as I am buying a new NEX7 as soon as production ramps up. The Sony factory that was making them went underwater during the Thailand floods last year. Right now, they are a little hard to find since only a handful are shipping from a new facility.

As we were returning to the car at 4:30PM maybe only 100 feet from the trailhead, there was a bobcat sitting in the middle of the trail. Sh!t, sh!t what a time to be without a camera. I pressed the cell phone camera into service. The cat was a distance away and the puny phone camera enlarges to a blur. For what they are worth, I post the original and a couple of crops here. The building in the background is the Nix Nature Center. In 15 years of hiking, this is only the third bobcat that we have seen.

[lilbitmo]

Nice catch, they are very elusive - I've only see two in 7 years, one in SD county parking at a PCT trailhead, came around the corner and almost hit him on a dirt road and just above the Portal on Whitney, one ran across the rocks that are at a 50 degree angle parallel with upper falls, he/she never missed a beat and made it look easy to be running across sheer granite - both gone faster than you can saw "Boooobcaaat"

[gwjones00]

We had one walk across our deck here in Newport Beach a few weeks back. There's a well documented case of "Babe" who lives in the Backbay area of Newport Beach: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... rhood.html