Elusive Magic @ Michael Despines Photography

Mar

31

2023

Elusive Magic

Shot of the Month Posted by Michael / 0 comments

Shot of the Month – March 2023

I love wild cats and I have had the good fortune of seeing lion, tiger, cheetah, serval, caracal, and the African wildcat in the wild. Of that group I am particulary partial to the leopard. Pound for pound they are perhaps the strongest of the group. Leopards are incredibly elusive and even a single sighting on a safari is a major victory. On our trip to Kenya in 2021 we had the amazing good fortune to have six leopard sightings!! I have only seen leopards in Africa but there are actualy 9 subspecies of leopard spread out across the world:

Source

It is generally accepted that the African leopard is the most numerous species though there is no reliable estimate of their total population on the continent. India is home to roughly 12,000 leopards. Many of the other species of leopards are on the verge of extinction, however.

Individuals remaining:

Amur Leopard: 100

Javan Leopard: 250

Arabian Leopard: 200

Sri Lankan Leopard: 800

Persian Leopard: 800

Indochinese Leopard: 1000 to 2500

Leopards are stealth hunters and are renowned for their ability to carry prey up into trees to feed in peace. In the image above we found a leopard in the Masai Mara National Reserve with the remains of a Thompson’s Gazelle.

The uninitiated sometimes confuse the leopard with a cheetah. As you can see here however, the animals are quite different in size and build:

Cheetah

Leopard

The leopard has shorter legs and a more muscular build. The cheetah (also photgraphed on the same trip) is built like a greyhound dog – long legs and a lean body. The spots on the cheetah are solid while the leopard has not spots, but rosettes. The cheetah is built to chase small prey across the open plain while the cheetah stalks in the bushes or may pounce from above while hiding in a tree.

A few more images from our trip:

A mother leopard playing with her cub just after sunrise