First bears, now bobcats. Large feral feline spotted in Belleville backyard

A Belleville resident has spotted a wildcat periodically traveling through her backyard on the east end of town.

Lucy Burton first saw her feline neighbor on Saturday after she let her dog out. Then she saw it as it passed through from a neighboring yard in the Brookhill Estates subdivision with a bird in its mouth on Tuesday.

“That’s when I took the photo, when it had stopped to eat its breakfast,” she said, referencing a picture that was posted to the social media site Nextdoor.

Brookhill Estates is just east of Green Mount Road and north of Illinois 177. It is bordered to the south and east by agricultural land and to the north and west by a thick wood line.

Burton’s neighbor Christy Belsom posted the picture to Nextdoor to ask others if it was a bobcat or a house cat. Since it was larger than a house cat and had identifiable markings, Don Schacher, an Illinois conservation officer, confirmed that it is a bobcat, which are also known as red lynx.

Burton didn’t call animal control because she didn’t know if they handle wildlife. She’s right, they don’t.

St. Clair County Animal Services only handles domestic animals, and they direct calls about wildlife to the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Schachner said the department will do inspections to see if the bobcat is a nuisance, meaning it has been destroying property or has become a threat to humans, which is rare.

The Illinois Department of Natural Resource’s website shows that bobcats live in every Illinois county . Schachner said they’re quite common, we just don’t see them.

He said bobcats are as timid as any other cat, and will usually have found a hiding place before they’re spotted. On some occasions, also like any other cat, they’ll ignore whoever spotted them and go about their business.

Another reason we don’t see them is because bobcats are mostly nocturnal hunters , the IDNR’s website said.

Outside of being cornered or threatened, bobcats rarely pose a threat to humans, Schachner said. They do pose a threat to small dogs and house cats, which should be kept inside if a bobcat is spotted, he said.

Free-range animals like chickens are also subject to the natural food chain by any predator, Schachner said, and should be kept inside a shelter if a bobcat starts hunting them.

Schachner said bobcats are protected animals, and so they can only be hunted with a special permit in addition to a hunting license.

Male bobcats are typically larger and may be more prone to traveling than female bobcats, Schachner said. According to the Wildlife Rescue League’s website, bobcats establish hunting territories that they stick to.

If you believe a bobcat has become a nuisance, contact the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Recent weeks have brought a rash of wildlife sightings in the metro-east and southern Illinois.

Weeks after a black bear was tracked across southern Illinois , across the Mississippi River and into Missouri, another bear was spotted by several residents as it worked its way from Columbia, up Illinois 157 through Dupo, west Belleville and O’Fallon. Known popularly in social media as “Dewey,” the black bear most recently was spotted in Mascoutah, near Scott Air Force Base, on Saturday.

Schachner and other wildlife experts at Southern Illinois University and the state of Kentucky said it likely is a male bear on a search for food and a female.