Bobcats are hard to spot in the wild, but this camera drone gives us a sneak peak at them being adorable
A Minnesota photographer was out trying to capture the sunset over the frozen St. Louis River in Deluth when he got an unexpected surprise.
He saw an animal playing on the ice in the distance, but was too far away to tell what kind.
“So, I thought, ‘I’m just going to fly my drone over to see what it is.’ It could have been a fox or a random housecat,” Mike Mayou told his local newspaper.
As his camera drone approached, three bobcats came into view.
Thrilled, he took about 5 minutes worth of video of the playful cats, who looked both curious and confused by the flying camera hovering in front of them.
“Looking back there are maybe some things I should have done differently,” he said of the spur-of-the-moment encounter.
“Getting really close to nature with a drone raises some ethical concerns. You don’t want to frighten them and make their heart rates go up. So, looking back, I probably wouldn’t have gotten quite as close as I did.”
Mayou has chosen not to disclose the bobcat’s location to avoid any further disturbance of the bobcats.
He notes “it’s quite rare for humans to see bobcats in the wild,” and that he wouldn’t have been able to photograph them without the drone technology allowing him to zoom in.
We’re glad the cats let us invade their privacy for just a moment.
Bobcat populations are threatened by eating rodents poisoned with anti-coagulant rat poisoning, among other things, like human development.