From Panthera leo to Panthera pardus

As mentioned in the last blog Andy and I are now across the river after a sweltering 2 hour drive across the south of the reserve, the plains around 'look out hill' were devoid of any plains game. Just a handful of giraffe and a worthy of a mention HUGE heard of Buffalo seeking shade in a deep lugga. It was not until we neared the centre of the reserve that the numbers of Impala, Thomson Gazelle and Topi increased.

After leaving our campsite for some well needed shade we met with our good friend Jackson Looseyia, it was great to see him after so long. We chatted with Jackson on what was going on in the 'bush telegraph' in the local area and knowing that we were in the middle of one of the best places to see Leopards (very habituated!) we were greeted with the news that Olive's older male cub was often seen nearby where we had met Jackson.

After chatting on other news we left for an afternoon drive. It could not have been any more than 90 seconds after saying farewell that Andy casually says "oh, there he is". Momentarily I (Sarah) was rather confused at what he was talking about, wandering if the heat had done some lasting damage! I then looked straight ahead and to the right and there was a leopard, 2 metres from the track and under a small croton thicket (and of course we did not park that close, holding back further up the road) The Leopard failed to move a muscle as we sat quietly expecting it to dart away any moment. However, it was not the young male we had just talked about and expected it to be. We are almost 100% sure its our lovely lady 'Olive'! The car was silent as we took this in, for a moment it was quite surreal. In total we had 15 minutes with this beautiful cat until other vehicles arrived. Not long after she casually glanced at the vehicles and slowly and confidently moved into the thicket, in a split second the Olive was as gone.

Later we checked whisker/spot patterns (albeit on some low res images which were not overly useful!) and still as we write this are fairly sure it was Olive, looking regal as ever and in good health. Later we will check the identity to be sure with Jackson, so if we have made any 'school boy errors' here we will update accordingly! Where her small cubs were we are not sure, but likely to be stashed out of harms way until Olive returns after a well earned break from the kids!

Lets hope sightings like this continue throughout the week!