Livermore Photographer's Nuzzling Bobcats Photo Wins State Prize

LIVERMORE, CA — Sue Griffin was walking down a scrubby path one morning in Alameda County on her daily 6-mile “outside gym” hike when she spotted a bobcat walking through the meadow carrying a gopher in her mouth.

“I figured she was bringing it to her kitten, so I watched her,” Griffin, a 30-year Livermore resident, told Patch. “From on the trail, I paralleled her. She was going through a meadow, and I was walking on a trail along with her. And then she got to this group of trees, and she started to call for her kittens.”

The kitten ran out, greeted its mother at the limb of a felled tree, and nuzzled its head against its mother in thanks. Griffin snapped a photo. “I know we’re not supposed to put human emotions on the cats, but it was just so tender,” Griffin told the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.

Over two years after the tender moment, Griffin’s photo is now the winner of the California Wildlife Photograph of the Year Award, beating out 740 other entries. Griffin entered the photo into the contest last September, at the urging of a friend involved in the contest.

Since winning the contest, Griffin has been lavished with accolades: she won $1000 in prize money, a pair of binoculars, a spread of her photo in a magazine, a book, two nights away at an Airbnb, and a framed proclamation virtually presented to her by California Sen. Steve Glazer (D-Contra Costa). The image will also be included, along with other finalists, in the indoor digital display in the lobby of the new California Natural Resources Building in Sacramento.

Someone even sent her a literal token of gratitude: a small token printed with the photo.

Griffin, who runs a data entry company based in Livermore, says she regularly sees bobcats on her daily walks, often sleeping in trees, and snaps photos of them. She also told Patch that she sees gray and red foxes, coyotes and their puppies, muskrats, raccoons, possums, owls, and “so many birds.” After a year or so of daily walks, she decided to buy her first high-end camera simply to capture everything that she was seeing.

Griffin’s Instagram account shares numerous photos of bobcats, bald eagles, mooses - and, most recently - a pair of nuzzling squirrels.

The California Wildlife Photo of the Year contest is presented by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, California Watchable Wildlife, CDFW’s Outdoor California Magazine, and sponsored by the Sierra Nevada Conservancy and Out of This World Optics.

2021 finalists include:

• Long-tailed Weasel races across field (Douglas Croft)
• Pacific Forktail Damselfly (Andrew Lincoln)
• Black-tailed Jackrabbit at Sacramento National Wildlife Refuge (Larry Whiting)
• Urbane Digger Bee pollinating in white cosmos (Andrew Lincoln)
• Bald-faced Hornet verses California Yellowjacket (Robin Agarwal)
• Osprey catches morning meal (Douglas Phillips)
• Bald Eagles in the Angeles National Forest (Andrew Lee)
• Yellowed-bellied Marmots in Yosemite National Park (Vishal Subramanyan)
• Coyote leaping for food in Yosemite National Park (Alice Cahill)
• Golden Eagle versus Ground Squirrel (Shravan Sundaram)
• Northern Pygmy Owl in Santa Cruz Mountains (Robin Agarwal)
• Spotted Owls at Golden Gate National Recreation Area (Maximilian Rabbitt Tomita)
• Sea lions at Channel Islands National Park (Ken Howard)
• California Condors at Tejon Ranch (Loi Nguyen)
• White-tailed Kites mid-air food transfer (Don Henderson)
• Great Gray Owl at Yosemite National Park (Vishal Subramanyan)