The Leopard

The African leopard (Panthera pardus pardus) were on the top of my “hoping to see” list on my adventure. Well, lucky me! When you have the “leopard whisper” Tristan with you in the Mara, your dream of seeing a leopard in the wild comes true with in first 2 hours of landing in the Masai Mara.

Can you spot the leopard, a master of camouflage, in the bush? My first sighting and my first sighting of a leopards was this…

Our guide Jackson got word that there was a kill found in some brush, we jetted off to our first sighting! I was so pumped. When we arrive, we could only see the kill with binoculars. As we waited patiently the sky’s opened up and we had a missive Masai Mara rain storm. Just what I was hoping for, secretly! I couldn’t believe I was sitting in a rain storm, in Africa, waiting for a leopard to appear! Well patients paid off and we had a brief, quick sight of this girl as she slinked back to her kill and chowed down in the rain.

I was luck to see a total of 5 leopards while in Kenya. One sighting that I will never forget was when we got to heard the residence leopard of Little Governors Camp, Romi, saw and meet up with her cub. A leopard “saw” is a distinctive call that sounds like a wood being cut with a saw. They do this to allows territorial neighbors to keep out of each other's way and also allows males and females to find each other.

We also sat for 5 hours with the salt lick females cub. She had a kill in the tree. You could see her mother every once in awhile pop her head out from behind a log and check on the cub.

And doesn’t stop there! Then on our last afternoon drive with Jackson, our guild from Little Governors Camp, he spotted a very shy leopard across the Mara river.

Mother nature provided us with epic sightings of the most beautiful big cat around!

Enjoy my photos of the leopards of the Masai Mara that I was lucky to see!