A Lifetime’s Worth of Memories!!
As part of my three month stay at the wildlife campus, I had
the pleasure of spending 10 days training at Black Leopard Camp and oh, what an
experience it was! Mike and Kari treat their guests like family and I can’t
wait to return and live in luxury, if only temporarily. I gained a wealth of
knowledge from my guide, Mike, while we drove around the property spotting
random trees, birds and stars. I had the opportunity to see my first African
civet and genet.
I was even proud of myself because now I am able to spot
leopard spoor from the Land Cruiser! To top off a wonderful 10 days, 7 of them
were spent observing wild leopards! We were able to locate the family of 2
leopard cubs that are estimated to be just under a year old. We sat quietly
(well, almost quietly) each morning and evening waiting for them to appear and
– BINGO! I witnessed a male and female cub enjoying a lovely kudu for dinner
night after night. The female has only one eye, but she is most precious and
completely oblivious to our presence. She is curious more than anything.
As Tara and I began driving on Monday night, we stumbled
upon what we believe is a third, female cub but she is more skittish than her
siblings so we only caught a quick glimpse before she ran into the thick brush.
Our camera traps have caught loads of pictures so we should
be able to identify them easily and return to you with more details shortly.
Also, it’s possible that Tara may have found a new sub-species of Golden Mole
in our area but we’ll have the results back from the lab a little later.
Well, I’m off to do some more tracking. Until next time,
enjoy these photos and keep checking back for more sightings!
-Toni
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