An adult bobcat walks underneath our family’s creature camera during an exciting encounter

It’s like someone turned on a faucet.

In the span of about two weeks our mountain surroundings went from dreary snow to spring.  And with the change, the animals began to emerge.  Our creature camera (aka a game camera or critter cam) began picking up their movement here at Osprey Acres in Plain, WA. And things have been nothing short of prolific.

At first it was the coyotes – nearly every day they slipped into the field fronting our house  to hunt voles and gophers in the patchy early melt.

This is perhaps the prettiest coyote we’ve ever seen.

The turkeys came next, cruising the canal trail and sifting through the forest litter that fell during the winter.

We hung a homemade bird feeder and filled it with suet and native seed to attract the migrating birds returning for the season.

Chickadees, Nuthatches, White-headed Woodpeckers and Blue Jays have been frequent guests at our feeder

One morning over breakfast, Jeff saw what he thought was a dog walking the path, but he quickly realized it was an adult bobcat sporting a thick winter coat.  He started snapping photos on his cell phone and yelling.  Amanda and Ian were quick to look out the bedroom window, and we all shared the magic of our first wild bobcat sighting together.

But our second bobcat encounter didn’t take years, but weeks.  This fat cat (probably the same one we saw before) sat down next to our bridge and began hunting along our property, spending a good five minutes with us.  We had enough time to get the big camera lens out to snap some action photos.

Our creature cam picked it up again in the early morning hours a few days later.

But we hit the critter cam jackpot just this week when we photographed a huge COUGAR!! Believe me, the spine tingling experience of seeing these images for the first time made the cost of our game camera worth every penny.

This is the closest we’ve ever come to a cougar sighting. They are elusive and shy and very difficult to spot in the wild.

Update: Just a few days after posting this, we spotted our first bear of the season – this rather large black bear wandering past the house.  Of course, we had just turned the camera that morning, so instead of seeing it’s face, we got a nice ass shot.  Time to order another camera!

A black bear emerges from it’s den for some spring feeding near Osprey Acres