2016.01 Looking for the rare Iberian lynx

In January 2016, I went to Spain with my father Marc. More precisely, we went to the Sierra de Andujar mountains to try to get a glimpse of the rare Iberian lynx. This medium sized cats, which is a different species than the boreal lynx, was close to get extinct but some conservation programmes managed to increase the population over the recent years (still those are heavily linked to the number of rabbits, the main diet of the Iberian lynx). This place is superb, the road that meanders close to the place were cats are most visible was as bad as an African track in a national park and the place is teeming with wildlife such as red deer, otters and many birds including large birds of prey such as cinereous vultures and golden eagles. So one would park somewhere and everybody would be looking with binoculars or lenses to try to locate a cat. January is supposedly good as this is supposed to be the mating season. So we enjoyed a couple of sightings along the road, never in close reach but one moment was interesting as we located a mating couple of lynx. You may get a good sighting of the cat here, some people have. My plan was to do a couple of photographic hides as the cats are known to be patrolling the same territory over and over. We saw a very nice individual after 40 hours of hide, thanks to my father who was extremely vigilant and notified me as I was getting pessimistic on our chances to see this guy, well done Papa!