Country diary: Spotting a lynx requires patience or profound luck | Mark Cocker

There are four lynx species on Earth: Canadian ; North American bobcat (the most abundant, with a population of possibly 1.5 million); Eurasian, the largest species, with males in some Asiatic populations weighing as much as 35kg; and the Iberian, the smallest and rarest, with an average weight of 8kg-9kg and which feeds on rabbits and partridges.

Surveys in the 1990s showed that the world population of Iberian lynx, confined now to Spain and Portugal, was fewer than 100 individuals, with most in the Parque Natural de Sierra de Andújar in Andalucía. With enhanced legal protection, public awareness and intensive captive breeding, this has risen to more than 2,000.

Lynx are easiest to see in spring when mating, but I have looked and learned that to encounter even one is a matter of great patience or profound luck. Ours came as we watched a small bird among lichen-covered oaks. I happened to scan beyond where grasses, long burnt down by a summer of fierce sun to the hue of a lion’s worn-out hide, were mingled with the grey of arid soil. These bland shades were further complicated by pools of sunlight and wells of deepest shadow. Out of the whole entangled noise of the autumn colours, two felines emerged barely 12 metres away as slow and silent shapes.

I quickly discovered that there are hints of humour in the otherwise seriously exciting business of watching Iberian lynx. Their ears have long backward-pointed tufts and as the cat walks, so these appendages look like birds’ heads nodding in parallel. When an adult stares straight at you, you see, on each side of its neck, two triangular shanks of black-edged white hair. They resemble those hideous side whiskers once worn by Victorian politicians.

The name lynx may originate in a Greek word for “light” or “brightness”, perhaps a reference to the hard tawny orbs of their glass-like eyes. These held us entirely. Neither mother nor cub showed any anxiety, nor made a sound, yet some exquisite communication passed between them, and they blended like liquid into the vegetation and were gone. The whole of that lifetime’s moment was a single minute.

• Country diary is on Twitter/X at @gdncountrydiary

• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 (Guardian Faber) is published on 26 September; pre-order now at the guardianbookshop.com and get a 20% discount