Tim Melling – Chinese Mountain Cat

Tim writes: Chinese Mountain Cat (also known as Chinese Desert or Steppe Cat) is a rare and little-known species that is endemic to a small area of western central China on the north-east edge of the Tibetan Plateau.  They occur at high altitude (2800-4100 m asl) in grasslands and are mainly nocturnal and wary.  I have seen a small number of them previously, but always at a distance and usually partially hidden among vegetation.  But this one was right next to the road enabling me to take a couple of close photographs from the car. It was pitch dark when I took this, lit only by a torch (no flash).

According to There are hardly any photographs of them in the wild.  There are no photographs at all on Flickr and on Google most photos are of captive zoo animals.  Wikipedia says the first ever (!) photographs of wild Mountain Cats were taken by camera traps just 12 years ago in 2007, and one was photographed in Ruoergai in 2015 (where I took this).  A den with two kittens was found and photographed in 2018.  I managed to photograph one last year, but the photos were too distant to consider posting on Flickr.

You can see it is rather plain coloured but has prominent bands on its bushy tail.  It also has distinctive  ear tufts like a Lynx that are more visible on the shadow.

Incidentally it was first named by Alphonse Milne-Edwards from a specimen collected in Sichuan in 1892.  He named it Felis bieti after a French missionary and naturalist Félix Biet (1838-1901).

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