Uncle Henry´s Universe.

Climb, crawl, jump, balance, slip, swear, wrestle with snow-filled spruces or dense thickets, that is to track lynx!

The gray weather has ruled all week. Around zero degrees. Wet, very wet. But the work has still paid off well. I have tracked two different wolf packs, a wolverine, and a female lynx with two cubs.

Cats sneak smoothly through the terrain. Often under obstacles because they are so agile, or along lying tree trunks because they have such unmatched balance. Trackers often lack those features, at least signed. I do not need a gym pass after a day of lynx tracking.

The kids play a lot. Rarely misses an opportunity to chase each other in playful jumps from rock to rock. Imagine if you had only a fraction of that energy!

There are several meters between each boulder in the picture but … no problem for a cat.

A few years ago, the local wolf pack had the habit of marking their territory by peeing on our mailbox. Today it received a wet treatment again, but now from a male lynx. Sure, we are waiting for some Christmas cards, but this Christmas greeting was unexpected.

The morning was devoted to tracking the lynx around our farm. It seemed to be in search of roe deer. It jumped up on rocks to scout and crawled among dense firs to sneak. It wants its Christmas meal just like we do.

The afternoon went in the wolf’s sign. I got a brief but lovely encounter with a wolf, big and powerful in leaping through the forest. They are so beautiful now, in their thick warm winter fur.

Today it was time for tracking lynx. A female and her kid up on the mountain we see through our kitchen window. Lovely!

Plus degrees and the snow is wet so the tracks are impressive big.

The big tracks of mother lynx to the left of the tree, the smaller ones from the kid to the right.

The kid plays a lot with his mother. I find jumps up to five meters long! But after play is often time for rest, the tracks show that they both sat together and enjoyed the view.

Happy weekend to you all!

It’s been
another great winter week with about 20 degrees below zero and lots of
interesting tracking. It began with wolves (scabies infected, tragically in the
biting cold) but ended with tracking of the season’s first lynx, a female with
a cub. It was far nicer.

Over long
distances, you could not see that there was more than one animal treading in
the tracks, but then suddenly, when they jump down a slope, it turns out to be
two.

In some
places appear that the female marked her territory, in other that kid become
restless and started to play around a bit, but almost immediately continue
their targeted journey towards bushland rich in roe deer and hares.

Lynx weighs
slightly compared to a tracker, still a little chubby after Christmas and New
Year holidays. (A beaver insidious dam subjected me to several unplanned
plunge, but it is claimed that the winter bathing is good for the character.)

Last week has
been a lonely cat walk. I have been following up reports of family groups of
lynx, but only found solitary animals. The population has really decreased in
our area in recent years. Sadly, it is an absolutely fantastic predator;
hopefully it’s just a temporary setback.

It is noteworthy that even
experienced hunters often miss judge tracks from lynx. They think they see
traces of animals with different size of the paws and report it as family group,
when in fact it is only one animal that walked on a bit different surfaces. (Although other factors such as speed and gangue influences the track size.)

On hard ground footprint is
slightly larger than that of the red fox. Approximately 7-9 cm long (Red fox;
5-7 cm) While dogs have a symmetric paw (where you cannot distinguish between
right and left footprint) have cats an asymmetrical. The picture shows clearly
that it is a right front paw. (Compare with your right hand) That there is a
front paw shown by the shape of the metatarsal pad, it curves slightly inwards.
(Rear foot metatarsal pad bulge slightly outward)

The lynx has built in snowshoes!
On loose surfaces, it sprawls with its paw to obtain as good carrying capacity
as possible. There are only a few meters between the above two pictures, but it is the same animal, only the snow cover is different. Not infrequently is this larger type of lynx
tracks reported as wolf tracks.

If the tracks are affected by
thaw one day they will be impressive, suddenly, we have very clear traces from
our “European tiger”.

During
clear nights in March, it happens that we hear shouting / barking lynx males
that pass our farm. It’s mating season and they are looking for a female.
Rännberg, the nature reserve we live at, is a well-known mountain where lynx
mate.

For me, is
probably the sound of lynx males more associated with wilderness, than howling
wolves. I have heard them so much over the years that it’s almost lost its
magic. But why choose, it is better to hear both wolf and lynx at the same
time, right?

It has
actually happened to me on one occasion. I recorded a howling wolf when
suddenly a shouting lynx interfering in concert. It was a pretty okay
experience of nature!

Want to hear how it sounded? Click here!

(There are sometimes problems with soundcloud, you may need to try on
different occasions.)

If you ever felt on a lynx claw, the word sharpness get a
new meaning! They are really sharp, and they have 20 of them. At one point in
the early nineties, I got acquainted with a young male lynx that would be
anesthetized and be provided with a radio transmitter. It was the first time a
wild lynx would be radiolabeled in Sweden.

The idea was that I should keep the cat while the researcher
gave it a syringe in the ass … Good thinking! Problem was simply that the
lynx would not allow itself to be caught! It WAS a mistake that we forgot to
secure one of the snares. (Of course, the snare he got stuck in) It gave the
animal a operating radius of 20 meters instead of the intended 2 meters.

After a number of more or less unsuccessful hunting leap
(which probably would have got all the predators in the world being ashamed to
death, if they have seen it!) We finally met head to head under a granary,
that’s when he showed me his sharp claws. Eight of them stroked quite next to
my nose. It was thrilling! All too exciting for my taste …

As most of you probably know, is a kitten relaxed and
passive when the mother lift it by the scruff … Do not do that with a lynx!
It does not work. I expected to grab a relaxed woolly cuddly toy but met a guy
in full battle mode and I can promise you, that hurt!

Everything finally worked. The lynx got its transmitter, the
scientist (yes, the lynx got him, too) and I got a tetanus shot at the local hospital,
and then we all got a very exciting summer together. But that’s another story.

This year Lynx inventory is approaching its end, even if all
family groups in the county have not been found and documented. In early March
starts the rut and then it becomes more likely that the two tracks together is
all about a pair of lovers, than it would be a female with a cub.

Early in the season, and if the snow is wet, which give
clear footprints, you can often tell the difference between the adult female’s
paw prints compared to cubs, which is slightly smaller. The picture shows
tracks from a lynx female and cub. ( cub was submitted at the prey while the
female walked away for a moment.) Unlike dog feets, cat’s feets are asymmetric
(like humans feets), so it is easy to distinguish between right and left
footprints.

One winter night in the late eighties, I was privileged to
study a female lynx and her cub. Under cover of darkness, they visited a roe
deer, the female killed a few days earlier. It was an amazing experience to see
the shy cats, only a few feet away and in a few hours time. Although I clearly
saw their big soft feet trampling the snow-covered ground I did not hear the
slightest sound, they moved silently. However, I was very surprised by how loud
conversation was between mother and baby, the contact call was a very sharp and
crisp sound.