OCEANSIDE, Calif. (KGTV) – A surveillance camera captured an extremely rare sight early Wednesday morning in an Oceanside senior community: two mountain lions visiting a front porch, with wildlife experts believing the pair may have been mating.
The unexpected visitors appeared just before 3 a.m. on Salem Court, in a community that borders Camp Pendleton. The family inside slept through the encounter but discovered the footage when they checked their camera alerts in the morning.
“Shock, total shock,” said Kylie Richards, whose grandmother and mother live in the home where the mountain lions were recorded.
The surveillance video shows a mountain lion, possibly a female, entering from the side of the house and lying down on the porch. Less than 20 seconds later, a larger mountain lion appears, approaches and sniffs the first cougar. The smaller mountain lion then makes growling noises that continue for nearly 30 seconds before both animals wander away in the direction they came from.
“It was a ‘Holy Cow’ moment. How lucky are we to see this happening right outside the front door,” Richards said. “There is one mountain lion, and suddenly, there’s another. Wow, we’ve never seen an animal that big on our property.”
Richards said her family is accustomed to seeing wildlife near the home, including birds, bobcats and coyotes, but never mountain lions.
Robin Parks, a longtime volunteer with the Mountain Lion Foundation, reviewed the footage and believes the sounds the smaller cougar was making were likely mating calls. According to Parks, capturing a mating pair on camera, especially on a front doorstep, is extremely rare.
However, Parks noted that mountain lion sightings aren’t unusual in the Camp Pendleton area, which typically serves as home to one or two cougars at a time.
In 2024, a mountain lion was spotted multiple times in Oceanside, including at City Hall and a theater, before a cougar believed to be the same animal was killed by a car. Now, a year and a half later, residents have documented a pair of the elusive cats.
“Cool to see them up close, but it brings more awareness,” Richards said. “Mom said that she’s not going to take the trash out at night. If you have pets, keep them inside. But at the end of the day, we’re in their neighborhood as much as they are in ours.”
Parks explained that while it’s possible the pair were foraging for food, mating pairs typically don’t hunt together.
Richards has filed a report about the sighting with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife.
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