Taylor Mountain female has kittens!

In November 2021, a young female mountain lion, P33, was collared by the True Wild/Audubon Canyon Ranch team. Shortly after collaring her we saw camera footage showing that she was one of 5 sub-adult mountain lions with mom, P12. This many siblings is very rare for mountain lions, and remarkable that P12 had managed to bring them all up to dispersal age. Fast forward to 2023, P33 has settled in to Taylor Mountain. It appears P12 'gave' P33 some of her territory.

In March 2023, P33's GPS collar points showed that she interacted with P13, the territorial male in the area. The map clearly showed mating behavior, as they were walking around together for two days in Trione-Annadel State Park. 

Mountain lion gestation period is around 90-95 days - a date we noted in our calendars! Sure enough, on 11 June 2023, P33’s collar data showed the first signs of denning!

She had kittens in June of this year but unfortunately we didn’t have access to the properties her early dens were located on so we weren’t sure how many kittens she had had.... until 20th September.

She finally caught a deer on a property we could access. We placed cameras and found out that she had 3 little ones following her around! 

Here is some incredible video footage we got that night showing the three 3-and-a-bit month old cubs feeding with mom... 

Since first writing this post, we have had several more nights of incredible footage of the cubs feeding. In this first video we found it interesting to see the way they use their different teeth clearly demonstrated. 

Early next morning P33 took great care in caching her prey, covering up all signs of it with leaves and debris and checking to make sure no smell was coming through. 

We were so excited to see how well she was managing to raise her first litter and hope to follow them into dispersal age and adulthood.

Videos credit: True Wild/Audubon Canyon Ranch