The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 43: Drama in the Riverbed

    This is our last full day at Mashatu Game Reserve before we head for home, and already the sun is setting.

    I am very sorry this wonderful trip is coming to a conclusion.   I wish I could stay here forever and ever.   Or at least, the foreseeable future.   I'm getting low on memory cards for the cameras, though, and I refuse to download the photos onto my little travel computer or an external drive, and then format the cards I'm using.   That's what everyone else does, but I'm not confident enough in my tech skills and am afraid I will lose all the photos.

    I bring home the cards with all the photos still on them, even though they are also copied to another external drive.   In fact, I still have the original memory cards with photos for every trip I've taken since I became interested in photography.   I sometimes need them to restore catalogues in my photo software.

    Anyway, we drop down into the riverbed.   It's in shade, and that's hard to expose for to get vibrant photos.   Everything looks blah.

    We come across this fellow sound asleep in the shade in the riverbed.

    We aren't going to get anything from him, other than a head raise to see what's there.

    He goes back to sleep, and we drive on.

    We find a leopard, also enjoying a snooze in the cool sand of the riverbed.   She, however, gets up, has a drink of water, and goes on a walk.

Video:   (Cell phones don't record well in the shade.)

    We watch as the leopard walks along the high riverbank.

Just an aside:   I asked Bashi if he had ever seen the river cut full of water.   He said he had, and that sometimes it overflows and floods adjacent land.   As for how fast it flowed, he said, "You would not dare put a boat in it."

    Suddenly, something ahead catches her attention.

    I look upstream and spot another leopard coming this way.

        The two leopards continue to converge.    The anxiety and tension among us are almost palpable.   I'm holding my breath.

    No one says a word.   We are all concentrating on the drama unfolding before us.

        The first leopard turns, and, crouching low and using some fallen branches for cover, moves out of the riverbed.

   

    Once the first leopard is out of sight, our guide moves up closer to the second leopard.   I'm hoping she doesn't catch the scent of the first leopard, but it is almost inevitable that she will.   The two are less than a hundred feet apart when the first leopard disappears.

    Someone, maybe me, asks what would happen if the two leopards meet.  The guide says, "They will fight."   He says the first leopard is the daughter of the second leopard, but that means nothing.   

    Leopards are solitary animals and very territorial, though young females often establish their own territory adjacent to their mother's.

The "blah" of photographing animals in the shade.

    Here, the second leopard enters an area where the late sun penetrates the river bottom.

      She walks right toward us.

    And passes in front of one vehicle.    Our tension is still high, but somewhat abated by the disappearance of the first leopard.    That won't matter if the second leopard comes across the first's tracks.

    To my dismay, the leopard goes up the bank.  Perhaps she has the scent of the first, after all.  

    Our guide hurries to find a trail leading up the riverbank and then searches for either of the two leopards in the riverine forest.   We can't find either of them.

    We compare notes with each other and agree that this event has all the tension of a well-wrought movie scene.   Except, it was real.

    The river bottom before we leave it.

    The sun has almost set, and it's time to head back to camp for our final night at Mashatu Lodge.

The 2025 Botswana Journals, Ch. 34: 'Nothing but Evil'

        "When I look into the eyes of a leopard," says Bashi, a long-time wildlife guide at Mashatu Game Reserve in Botswana, "I see nothing but evil."

        While I don't necessarily agree, it's hard to argue with someone who has guided for many, many years, observed these cats so often that he can tell them apart by their spits/rosettes.   He knows their territories and their behavior.   He knows where to find them.

      Yet, there is something different, something uncomfortable, about a leopard’s eyes.  They aren’t the yellow-brown of lions, nor the striking, radiant amber of cheetahs when the sun hits them.

        Leopards have a luminous green glare in their eyes.   Not a strong, deeply-colored primary green, but a green-yellow that is disconcerting and unreadable.   

        In Kenya’s Maasai Mara, there was a leopard named Fig that had blue eyes, and she threw blue-eyed cubs, the most famous of which was Figlet.

        Little did I know when we started out this morning in a beautiful sunrise, that we would see and photograph FOUR different leopards within the span of three hours, and miss a another by minutes!   Then, hear of two sightings from a group that was in a different area. 

Very early morning at Mashatu Lodge.

African sunrises and sunsets are often phenomenal.

        Leopards prefer the forested areas beside rivers and waterways, so they can haul their prey high up a tree to avoid scavengers.   They climb trees to escape baboons and lions, or just to take a nice nap on a perfect limb.   So, we search the areas along the rivers.

                        LEOPARD NO. ONE

 We are in the river bottom when we come upon a male patrolling and marking his territory.   He is the most active of the four leopards we see today, so he gets the most photos.

VIDEO:

        On patrol in his territory.   He is known as the Euphobia male.

        And stopping to spray-mark.

More spraying.

        We run out of road to follow him on, so we go elsewhere.

LEOPARD NO. TWO

        We find this female resting in a cool, damp area, also in a riverbed.

    She looks around at her vistors....

    And goes back to sleep.

    She has a name, and if you can read my notes, you'll know what it is.

Right in the center.   It appears to read  "Greentree" female.

  These notes are often written while bouncing along a trail.   

    She is the mother of the next leopard we find.

LEOPARD NO. THREE

        This leopard is three years old, and she is the daughter of Leopard # 2.   Her name is Lerato, which means love.

 

        She's another "flat cat" and will probably stay that way, so we move on.

LEOPARD NO. 4

        Bashi spots this unidentified leopard while we're down in a river bottom.   It's concealed between two termite mounds and as soon as we get our shots, he's in a rush to get out of the river bottom.

    This is my favorite sighting of the leopards this day because of what you will read below.

        And off we go, pausing only to photograph an owl that we drive right under.

        Once on higher ground, Bashi turns left and drives into the riverine vegetation.    He passes right by the vehicles with the rest of our group, who are stopped and waiting for us to join them for coffee.   They look puzzled.

        Once I see the group, I understand Bashi's hurry.  It isn't only to get a possible face-on opportunity to photograph the leopard, but it's also because the cat is very near the group, watching them carefully.

        Who knows?   Who knows?   Probably nothing would happen.   Humans are pretty large prey for a leopard, especially in a group.   One alone?   Maybe.

        Nonetheless, I am tickled to tell them they were being spied upon by a leopard.

        Sometime after coffee break, when we are back in the vehicles, Bashi hears of another leopard very near camp, so we head quickly in that direction.   We miss it by a couple of minutes!!!

        Four leopards, almost a fifth in one morning?   Exceptional.   The only place that came close, for me, in the number of leopards seen was at Kirkman's Kamp near Kruger National Park in South Africa.

        Then, at lunch, another group that was in a different area tells us they saw two more leopards.

BIRDS:

            The owl we drove under:

Verreaux's eagle-owl

White-fronted bee-eater.

Saddle-billed stork.   A large stork with a wingspan of 9 feet, this bird stands up to 5 feet tall.

    Panning, or leading, with the camera is one way to catch birds in flight.   I might have been leading a bit too far:

Red-billed buffalo weaver. LIFER

Kori bustard

And the beautiful bird-of-many-colors, the Lilac-breasted roller.

FYI:   Leopards have enormous strength.   They're built like a tank, not like the sleek and streamlined cheetahs or the massive, impressive lions.   A leopard's ability to climb a tree while carrying an antelope, or a young zebra, is phenomenal.