Thanks for sharing. Where was the photo taken? We've had bears, bobcats, foxes and deer on our block. And just a few weeks ago we had a deer get in our (6' fenced) backyard. I believe it was running from a mountain lion. And we live in Santa Rosa city limits!
I should add, my curiosity is about understanding their habits. I don't have any problem with them, but I do want to understand where they are and how they behave. I walk the dog every night before bed. I pay attention to her and if she is nervous, we don't go that way. One night she was unhappy about either direction from the house so I walked her around the backyard on a leash (not that our fence would keep out a mountain lion, bobcat, or even deer or bear). We do have at least one known mountain lion in our vicinity, although its never been sighted on our street that I know of.
This was in the sweeney ridge trail area in san bruno, administered by golden gate rec area national park on 5/7.
It is known and protected mountain lion habitat with mention at the gate and on the info sign. They even go as far as describe the area as "a refuge for mountain lions".
The trail is typically moderately busy, and i was hiking at 7pm with 1.5hrs of light left and only after the first releases that park restrictions were softening. Still there was a group approx once per 15min, so far from deserted, but much lighter traffic then this park area typically gets.
The mountain lions are extremely stealthy and avoid humans even compared to bobcats, coyotes etc, but it is not like bigfoot or nessie. They are there. I've talked to some rangers /park staff and none have seen a lion even after spotting most of the other wildlife.
In this case one major reason the lion was in the area was less humans on that trail for while. The reason it was even seen though follows, and probably will start to sound familiar and true to many humans. I spotted the lion around the bend standing in the middle of the road crossimg beteen the infrequent human groups. The actual distance was approx 100ft away and at max distance (the pics are zoomed and cropped).
The reason for the freezeup: There was also a juvenile lion, who was playing peekaboo under the rail. I am sure parents can relate when Junior is goofing off making them late or in this case getting them spotted.
The lion behavior now makes sense as mom is not going to ditch the kid, so we were at a standoff for several minutes Meanwhile, mom was staring down everyone making sure nobody tries anything, just as the humans were doing the same to her and waving our arms and trying to look big and goofy, but in this case, non-effective. Junior finally gets his act together and got on the road and crossed non-chalantly.
After my notification to authorities, the pair was also spotted by other hikers the following morning. By that next day though, staff posted additional flyers and info at the trailheads. Both in the adjacent county parks(by county park) and at this trailhead by nps ranger who has jurisdiction. I hope people follow them. There haven't been any additonal postings of sights, and the increased human usage (as parks openings and go outside instructions relaxed a bit) probably drove them to quieter parts of their territory.
The details for lion education and behavior are best left to the experts and other websites who have wrote it up better than I can restate.
For the bay area here is a decent resource for education with a map tracking of sightings. It maybe a little dated and overlapping years of sightings; and most are via trail cams as they are most active dusk/dawn. But you can see the mountain lions area includes up and down all the peninsula open space.
http://www.bapp.org/
The Bay Area Puma Project (BAPP) is the first large scale research, education and conservation program for pumas in and around the San Francisco Bay Area.
www.bapp.org
If you really want to deep dive into it, the bapp sponsoring lion conservation nonprofit
felidaefund.org has been holding education series like every couple weeks on various wildlife cat topics (now web based). Some related to Bay Area research projects (recorded).
felidaefund.org
Another lion conservation site has info and education targetting different levels; but includes an section going into state legal and management issues.
mountainlion.org
If you were interested in the wildlife management, CA Fish and Game also has a wildlife section with links to other programs and research (and on other animals). Note, our state has a PhD in wildlife ecology staffed in charge of lion research as well other researchers in the dept, so I feel confident there are at least dedicated scientists who spend their careers thinking about this, are in place to guide the wildlife management and policy and not Karen or John on fb who know how to handle the situation; their credentials being they were born in Montana.