Wednesday 4 July 2012

The Leopard fest continues!

After an awesome morning with Olives Cub (Saba) the luck with Leopard sightings continued into the afternoon of the 3rd.

We heard that a female Leopard had been spotted just south of the Talek so of course we hot footed it over, on the way spending a few brief moments with one of the sub adult males from the Rekero pride who was wandering around and calling for the rest of the pride who were located not too far away.

We came to a small Gardinia bush and a gathering of cars, and sure enough there she was, Bahati, the beautiful female Leopard and as mentioned before the previous offspring of the legendary Olive. Perched in the middle she peeked out and then descended down to a recent kill, a large male Impala. She soon came down and fed at the base, just out of sight. Feeding for just a short amount of time she then clambered back into the bush and away from the heat of the afternoon, where she groomed herself and rested. It was not long though until she became quite restless and moved around the bush, occasionally giving us all some good opportunities for a few nice shots. Surprisingly she made no effort to move the kill into the confines of the bush and had fed very little, but with barely any wind and the lions hauled up a couple of kilometres away her kill would likely be safe for a while. However, come nightfall and as the scent of the kill would start to fill the air it would no doubt start to attract other predators such as Lion and Hyena. She later moved on, through the long grass and down to a nearby lugga where she disappeared and was no doubt finding a pool of water in which to rehydrate.

So we were lucky in that the 3rd of July marked a double dose of Leopard (or treble if you want to be pedantic and count Olive!) and what a great day it had been, seeing Olive (albeit deep in the tree) as well as two of her offspring, one from a current litter and one from a previous litter.

Just another awesome day in the Mara and with the usual fun and laughter continuing into the evening with our good friends Aatish and Aashit.


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