Bobcat (Lynx rufus)

County List:

Rule:

Forested or Mixed Forested/Nonforested Landscapes

Habitat Requirements may be distributed across the NEIGHBORHOOD

      (Any Upland Deciduous (Regen or Sap or Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Any Upland Conifer Except Conifer Plantations (Regen or Sap or Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or (Any Upland Mixed (Regen or Sap or Sm Saw or Lg Saw or Uneven))
      or Upland Brush
   containing: (Rock Bluff or Dead Down Woody Debris or Living Cavity Tree)
   neighboring:
      (Northern White Cedar (Any Size Class))
      or (Black Spruce (Any Size Class))
      or (Any Lowland Mixed (Any Size Class))
      or Lowland Brush

Habitat List:

view size class definitions

Literature:

It is generally absent in southern areas dominated by cities and endless farmland. Preferred habitat is large tracts of hardwood forests, but it also lives in coniferous and mixed deciduous/coniferous woods. It readily occupies wooded swamps and often stays close to riparian forests in areas thickly populated by humans.

Eastern cottontails and snowshoe hares are common prey, but a bobcat eats most small mammals that are present in our northern forests; shrew, voles, mice, jumping mice, bog lemmings, squirrels, opossums, and even porcupines are reported foods. This cat readily feeds on deer carrion and it sometimes preys on sick or young deer as well. An occasional frog, snake, or bird adds variety to a diet dominated by mammals.

Habitat: Mixed deciduous-coniferous and hardwood forests and brushy and rocky woodlands broken by fields, old roads and farmlands. Frequently found in cedar swamps and spruce thickets. Favors areas with thick undergrowth. Softwood cover preferred in winter.

Special Habitat Requirements: Rocky ledges critical in Massachusetts. Prefers to den in rock crevices, under windfalls, or in hollow logs. The den is usually lined with dried grasses, leaves, and moss.

Habitat Preferences: The bobcat has a wide range of habitat preferences, being found in hardwood forests, mountains, and deserts. Its basic need in any situation is some woody cover. In Michigan, the bobcat's primary environment is the temperate hardwoods which originally covered much of southern Michigan. After deciduous second-growth encroached into Northern Michigan areas which formerly contained mostly evergreens, the bobcat presumably found considerably more acceptable habitat in the more northern coniferous forests. Today, in northern Michigan, the bobcat may be expected in deciduous forest or mixed hardwoods and conifers. There is some evidence that bobcats tend to avoid leafless deciduous woodlands in winter because of often heavy snow accumulations, increased wind, and low night temperatures in this rather exposed environment, as compared with the well-canopied, evergreen areas. Erickson found bobcats in Michigan uplands primarily in warmer seasons and in lowland forests in winter. The most used stands were of white and black spruce, white cedar, balsam, alder, willow and poplar followed by swamp situations covered with thick growths of alder-willow or of white cedar. Because the bobcat is often prone to move along wooded waterways, the species may be expected to follow stream systems in more southern parts of the state.

Behavior: Bobcats use two types of shelters. One is a temporary hiding area for one-day stays when an animal is cruising around its home range. These resting beds may be in brush piles, under rock ledges, inside hollow logs, above ground in tree holes, and below exposed roots. The other type of shelter is usually a substantial den used as a nursery by the female parent over a period of several weeks. Some of the more protective shelters used for temporary occupancy may also qualify for nursery dens. In Minnesota, Rollings reported a family of four young bobcats denning in a standing, hollow white pine with the opening about 5 feet above ground.

Associates: Although the bobcat traditionally occurred throughout Michigan, much of the northern part, where evergreens abounded, was initially lynx country. In the early years of the twentieth century, bobcat is presumed to have replaced the lynx and become well-established in the second-growth deciduous stands dominating much of the logged-over coniferous areas in northern Michigan.

Key Components of Habitat: Early to mid-successional stages center of bobcat activity; ecotones and mosaic of cover types important; ledges, cliffs, rock outcrops are centers of activity and reproduction sites in some regions.

Management Actions to Enhance or Maintain Habitat Quality: Maintain mosaic of cover types with early to mid-successional stages; maintain cover adjacent to physical features that enhance habitat diversity (e.g. cliffs); maintain vegetation in riparian areas and ridgelines to enhance dispersal.

Habitat: The vast geographic distribution of bobcats shows how this species can use a wide variety of habitats, including conifer forests in the northeast, bottomland hardwood forests in the southeast, and deserts in the southwestern portion of their range. Only large, intensely cultivated areas appear to be unsuitable habitat.

Bobcats use different areas within their geographic range, and how much they use these areas varies according to the area's vegetational and topographical features and the bobcat's food and shelter requirements.

Bobcats have repeatedly been found to heavily use areas with dense understory vegetation and high prey densities. Bobcats frequently used openings in bottomland hardwood forests, which resulted from farms, timber cuts, roads, and pipelines and which had dense growth of briars, vines, and grasses; these were used for hunting and as daytime resting sites in Louisiana and Alabama. Two of the three natal dens found by Kitching and Story were in the base of stumps and the third was located within a brush pile; all were in areas where hardwood timber harvesting had recently occurred. In southeastern Okalahoma, clearcut areas less than 10 years old supported higher numbers of eastern cottontails and hispid cotton rats than did mature forest stands; these also were highly used by bobcats. The majority of prey-capture attempts recorded by Hamilton while snowtracking bobcats in Missouri were in brushy fields and bottomland hardwoods. Bobcats generally avoided mature closed-canopy stands of pine and mixed pine-hardwood forests.

In the northern part of their range, bobcats have been reported to prefer stands of Norway spruce and mixed stands of eastern hemlock and hardwoods, as well as lowland conifer stands dominated by white cedars and black spruces. These areas support high densities of snowshoe hares and are the preferred winter habitat of white-tailed deer. In addition, these habitats are characterized by lower snow depths, lower wind speed, and more moderate temperatures than are upland deciduous sites. This enables bobcats near the northern limit of their geographic range to conserve energy.

Bobcats frequently use rock ledges and outcrops for diurnal retreats and as natal dens when available. Natural rocky areas were preferred den sites in eastern Idaho, but artificial structures were also used. Zezulak and Schwab believed that the frequent use of rocky terrain by bobcats in their northern California study area was due to the abundance of prey in these areas and the shelter that these sites afforded. Rocky ledges may also serve as foci for courtship and other social interactions.

Both Fuller et al. and Rolley and Warde observed seasonal shifts in habitat use by bobcats. These shifts apparently were in response to seasonal changes in prey availability, climatic variations, and changing energetic demands associated with reproduction. The temporal differences in habitats used by adult females in Oklahoma may be due to the crepuscular activity patterns of both bobcats and their prey and to differential prey densities among cover types.