On the trail of Burni Zip the Lynx and its prey
In the woodland near Mrkopalj where Burni Zip the Lynx had stayed for a number of days, we discovered the reason for such behaviour. Namely, we found the remains of a deer, the lynx’s prey, on which it had been feeding over several days. Whenever possible, lynxes tend to cover their prey, either with leaf litter, earth or snow in the winter, to keep it hidden from other carnivores. In the forests of Gorski Kotar, a well-known “thief” of lynx prey is the bear.
In our case, under a pile of leaf litter we uncovered a lot of fur, and the lower leg of a deer with part of the femur. Because other parts of the prey were missing, in particular the spine and head, we suspect that a bear may have indeed come across the lynx’s catch, taken some of the remains and then left the feeding site with them. Interestingly, the feeding site is in the immediate vicinity of a logging site, where trees are felled and extracted from the forest during the day. Obviously this fact did not seem to affect the lynx’s feeding, which typically took place during the quieter time of day and during the night.