Photographer searched for elusive predator for years, then got to spend hours with one
It had been years since Wesley Berg had last encountered a lynx, and the wildlife photographer was eager for another sighting.
Back in 2016, he had been cross-country skiing with his wife and stopped for a break when he heard a twig snap behind him. He turned to see two lynx, one female and one adolescent, wandering along his ski tracks, he told McClatchy News.
He snapped some quick photos with a point-and-shoot camera he had with him.
“That motivated me to get into wildlife photography,” he told McClatchy News. “I always dreamed since of finding another lynx and having a high-quality camera with me.”
His chance finally came on Tuesday, April 11, after seven years of searching. This winter, he’d seen some tracks in the snow but no lynx.
“After years of searching, I finally came across a lynx this morning,” Berg wrote on his wildlife photography Facebook page. “Not only that, but it was very cooperative as I spent over an hour hanging out with it while it mostly ignored me.”
Berg wasn’t sure if the lynx he spotted was male or female, but he could tell it was an adult, he said on Facebook. He added that it was a beautiful animal.
It’s one of the rarer wildlife encounters in Colorado, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife’s Southwest Region.
“A truly special sighting in the San Juan Mountains,” CPW officials wrote on Twitter.
At one point, lynx disappeared from Colorado due to trapping, poisoning, and loss of habitat, Colorado Parks and Wildlife said in an entry about lynx conservation on its website.
The department began its own seven-year lynx-related quest to reintroduce the animals back into the San Juan Mountains in the 1990s, officials said. The effort was an “astounding success,” and now Colorado is home to between 150 and 250 lynx.
Sometimes people report seeing lynx, but usually they’ve confused them with bobcats, officials said.
Bobcats are lynx’s much smaller and stubbier counterparts, according to How Stuff Works. Lynx are taller, and they have longer legs, larger paws, and a tuft of dark hair shooting from the tips of their ears.
Video Berg captured shows the sleepy lynx relaxing and dozing off in the shade.
“A short video of a sleepy Canada lynx on a beautiful sunny spring day in the San Juan Mountains,” Berg wrote in the caption.
Later, the cat sits up and takes in its surroundings, at one point looking right into Berg’s camera before letting out a big yawn followed by a huge stretch — just like any housecat might do.
This story was originally published April 12, 2023 at 7:37 PM with the headline "Photographer searched for elusive predator for years, then got to spend hours with one."
