Three days later, Norm Lee shot photos of the kitten’s mom.
Here kitty, kitty, kitty.
A Lynn Valley photographer has nabbed some photos of a lifetime after years of scouring the wilderness – a baby bobcat and its mother.
Norm Lee’s Instagram feed is a Noah’s Ark of bears, deer, mountain goats, pikas, beavers, birds and other critters from around B.C. It was in the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve on Oct. 16 when he had the encounter he’d been waiting for since he first spotted a bobcat in the wild in 2019.
“I love bears and I’ve photographed literally hundreds of bears and it never gets boring to me, but a bobcat has always been something that I’ve wanted to shoot since my first missed opportunity,” he said.
During his afternoon visit, Lee spotted a bear near a pond but the lighting wasn’t right, so he rode his bike to the other side in hopes of getting a better pic.
“I’m probably 20 metres from the bear and I walk over and I see something on the side of the stream and the little bobcat looks up at me,” he said. “I was kind of in awe and got kind of numb, actually. It’s been something I’ve been after for a long time.”
With the bear lurking somewhere behind him, Lee said he knew he’d only have a matter of seconds to get a shot off before the notoriously elusive feline bolted. The kitten had likely never seen a human before and hung around for about 20 seconds, which gave Lee the time he needed to train his lens on the animal and snap his photos.
Lee estimates the bobcat was about six months old – smaller than a common house cat. Bobcats typically have two to four kittens per litter, which will stay with their mothers for up to a year. Lee reasoned the mom and siblings were likely somewhere around, so he went back to the same area three days later and lightning struck twice.
“Probably within two minutes of getting there, I spotted the mom running down the trail…. It was total disbelief. If you had told me that story, I wouldn’t believe you,” he said. “Coming across one, let alone two in a period of three days, it’s just unbelievable.”
Lee tried his luck one more time later in the week but found a busy film set nearby and no animals of any kind.
Not everyone is so lucky as to have such beautiful wildlife mingling in their backyard, Lee said. He rides his bike into the Lower Seymour Conservation Reserve at least twice a week in hopes of capturing photos he can share. While some wildlife photographers, particularly birders, move in packs, Lee is a solitary animal.
“I want to get the picture not everybody gets,” he said. “In the woods, I’m by myself. I can spend the time. If I know I’m agitating the animal, I’ll back off and there’s plenty of room for the animal to go. And it’s more of a personal experience.”
To see Lee’s other wildlife shots, follow him online at instagram.com/phoenix45photo/.