More bobcats are on the prowl in Conn.
Here is how Geoffrey Hammerson describes the state’s bobcat population in his 2004 book “Connecticut Wildlife’’ as “…sparsely distributed in the vicinity of thickets and patch woods in less-developed regions of the state, especially in the Northwest Highlands.”
Here is how we could describe them today: Everywhere.
They’re still in the Northwest Highlands.
Bethany Sheffer, naturalist and volunteer coordinator at the Sharon Audubon Center, said photographer Jonathan Doster has gotten good shots of bobcats in a meadow at the center near its bluebird boxes. And once, driving to Torrington, she said, she spotted one, backed up and watched.
“I saw it stationary, just standing there,” Sheffer said.
They’re farther south. Ken Elkins, community conservation manager for Audubon Connecticut, said that in his 13 years working at the Bent of the River Nature Center in Southbury, “we’ve had multiple sightings.”
Often, he said, people see them at the edge of the center’s woods. Once, he said, he saw one on the side of a meadow, not far from the Bent’s visitor center.
“After fresh snow, we’ll see their tracks,” he said.
But increasingly, bobcats are making those tracks through suburban backyards and downtown back alleys.
“We’ve had them in Hartford, in Bridgeport,” said Jason Hawley, wildlife biologist with the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.
And their population is growing.
“A few years ago, we would have said there were 800 to 1,000 bobcats in the state,” Hawley said. “Today, I’d say double that.”
If you see a bobcat, DEEP would like to know. It has a reporting site at ct.gov/ DEEP/ Wildlife/ Learn Aboun t-Wildlife/ Bobcats in-Connecticut.
It’s a remarkable comeback for the state’s only wild cat and its top predator.
We have ourselves to thank.
“We’ve created perfect bobcat habitat in the state,” Hawley said.
The DEEP is now finishing a three-year project to study the state’s bobcats. In its first two years. Hawley said, the state caught about 100 bobcats, fitted them with radio collars, and released them.
What the research found, Hawley said, is that Connecticut bobcats favor the suburbs and the cities, where the pickings are good.
In the suburbs, there are bird feeders that attract squirrels, both gray and red. There are rabbits. There are also patches of woods to escape into, stone walls and decks to perch on to watch the world.
Hawley said that while it pains him to say it, thickets of non-native, invasive shrubs like multi-flora rose and barberry provide perfect cover for bobcats. They can hide in those tangles on the edge of yards, waiting to pounce when prey come within range.
In both suburbs and cities, there are mice and rats to eat.
There are also raccoons and opossums for the taking. In the suburbs, another comeback species — wild turkeys — make a good bobcat meal
And bobcats are now thinning out the state’s too-abundant white-tailed deer herd.
“A bobcat can take down a deer, especially the males,” Hawley said.
They are also reducing the herd by preying on newborn fawns.
These fawns are hardwired to sit still, their spotted coats providing camouflage. They have no scent, Hawley said, so other predators may pass them by.
But bobcats, which hunt by sight, spot and nail the fawns.
“In Litchfield County, bobcats are the animal most responsible for deer mortality,” Hawley said.
Bobcats are sizeable. Males can weigh 18 to 35 pounds, females, 15 to 30 pounds. They’re faintly spotted, with fur that’s browner in summer, more gray in winter. They have tufted ears and a short tail that looks, well, bobbed.
They’re generally solitary. They’re also polygamous — they mate with multiple partners. Females do all the child-rearing, while the male bobcats tomcat around.
They were once a species that nearly disappeared from the state.
In the 19th century, when the state was almost completely deforested for agriculture, there were no woods for bobcats to shelter in. Until 1971, the state also paid a bounty to hunters who shot bobcats, believing they were a menace to livestock and game species.
But in 1972, the state reversed course, and classified bobcats as protected furbearing mammals, eliminating any bobcat hunting. They’ve returned.
Hawley said in the 1970s, wildlife biologists believed bobcats were strictly forest creatures, a wild animal that preferred a wooded domain.
The DEEP’s study shows they’ve become suburbanized. They’re Connecticut residents.
“We tracked their territory,” Hawley said. “If they had any forest, they avoided it like the plague.”