A few minutes of searching revealed the identity of the pelvis' previous owner - a most unfortunate beaver (Castor canadensis). First, we found a forelimb, then a scattering of parts including a hindlimb, a tail, and a skull.

Typically, cougars cache their kills, covering the carcass with dirt and debris between feeding bouts. We discovered just such a textbook cache in this willow thicket. Notice that organic debris has been removed in the forground and a heap of sticks, dirt, and leaves has been created in the background. Atop this heap we found a small pelvis. We were at first a little perplexed as to what animal this might have come from.

The habitat our collared cougar has chosen to remain in consists of cottonwood and willow forest in a matrix of dense salt cedar and willow sapplings. We found our cougar's kill in the dense stand of young trees in the back ground of the sappling photo.

In the last few days we have received more coordinate data from our collared cougar. With these data we constructed an updated map (above). This map includes the approximate boundary of our bighorn sheep management area, which corresponds to the 5,000 ft contour. Our cougar seems to be faithful to a long narrow homerange along the Rio Grande. Fortunately, at least this cougar is staying away from the sheep. We have also identified a potential kill site from our previous data . The red arrow on the map indicates the location. Suspected kill sites are areas where the cougar has remained for 24 hours or more. Yesterday we slogged our way through incredibly dense brush to investigate this site. We were not disappointed!

This photo, taken on the 11th of June, is our fourth photo of a cougar from Walnut Spring since the 16th of April. Interestingly, the foot placement of this cougar is identicle to that of the cougar photographed on 8 May.

This cougar was photographed in Release Canyon on the 7th of June, just a few days after our bighorn ram photos were taken at this same location.

This cougar was photographed in Silver Canyon on 23 May. Another cougar photograph was obtained from this location on 26 March (see April posts). As with the photographs of the cougar in Summer Spring Canyon, we are struck by the fact that these cats seem to travel precisely the same path, even in a relatively wide and seemingly uniform wash.

This next photo was taken on the 18th of May in the north central portion of the Fra Cristobal range. Most of our cougar photos are taken between dusk and dawn. This photo is unusual in that it was taken at 8:25am, long after the sun had risen.

We have obtained a number of new cougar photos over the last month. The above two photos were taken on the 8th and 9th of May at Walnut Spring.

Here we have an excellent photo of a class 4 ram. These are the old men of the mountain, representing the oldest age class of males in the population. We usually only see one or two of these fellows every year. The horns have curled a full 180 degrees and beyond and the horn tips are beginning to flare out to the side. Desert bighorns often rub these horn tips against rocks and cliffs, wearing them to a blunt end.

The bighorn rams have spread out far and wide across the range in the last few weeks. Previously, they were concentrated on the northeast quarter of the mountain. Our suspicion is that ewes are beginning to come into estrus and the rams are searching them out. This photo from Release Canyon seems to confirm our suspicions. If you look closely you can see that the ewe on the far left of this photo is wearing one of our radio collars.

We've also been seeing a bobcat (Lynx rufus) at Eagle Rock Canyon very frequently. Perhaps this is a female with kittens nearby.

Recently our remote cameras have been producing a wide variety of excellent wildlife photographs, such as the Great Horned Owl below, in addition to several NEW cougar photos. We rarely see coyotes (Canis latrans) on our cameras. Here are two coyote photos taken in April at Scenic Spring.

We obtained several exciting photos yesterday while checking the remote cameras. One of the more spectacular is this photo of a Great Horned Owl just after it had taken a bath in Walnut Spring. We also obtained some additional cougar photos. More photos to follow as well as an update on our collared cougar.