“Sunrise Alert - Male & Female Cougar Pair - Portrait”

by Harvey Bodach

Original Unframed Painting done with Acrylics on Masonite Board

20” x 15”

With Floating Wood Frame

22” x 17”

Completion Year - 2022

The Cougar stands out as the largest of all the North American cats. Adult males are much larger and weigh more than females, ranging between 70 kg and 40 kg range, respectively. They have a huge deep-chested and muscular body, with a rounded and shortened head. Unlike the Lynx or the Bob Cat, they have a large trailing tail.

Their fur coats are also far shorter then other cats, especially in summer, but for winter they thicken up a little more. Colours range from reddish, greyish, or tawny to dark brown with distinctive black patches around ears, the facial markings and tail tips.

Their range and distribution keeps changing and reacting to encroaching human populations. In the past they followed the movements of their food source like the White Tailed Deer. Swelling human populations in the east had forced them westward. Now with major developments happening in the west, Cougars are once again on the move, and are now making a comeback to the east. There have been sightings reported as far east as Ontario, along the Niagara Escarpment which runs through the southern portion of the province.

It is late summer in this Cougar Pair portrait in which a dominant male stands tall and erect behind a sitting female. Both are intensely focussed and positioned in a stalking mode. Sights and sounds have caught their attention, which are far more effective for them when hunting then the sense of smells are. They are silent hunters traveling day or night through a wide range of vegetation types, seeking out white-tailed deer and mule deer which are their preferred prey. They are extremely elusive, perfectly camouflaged when stocking prey, avoiding direct human contact whenever possible.

(Scientific Name: Haliaeetus leucocephalus)

CLOSE-UPS

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