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On our trip December we were lucky on our first afternoon drive found the two Leopards.We first spot the mother between Houmoed and Monro in the river walking towards us. Then we spotted the youngster against the Dune.
Is this the Auchterlonie cub?

What a lovely sighting Jan and you are spot on with your identifications. The first leopard is the Auchterlonie female and the second is indeed her cub.

Could i ask a favour, in addition to reporting the sighting here could you download the spread sheet on my site and report your sightings to me in that form. http://www.ast.uct.ac.za/~schurch/leopards/ you can also get the old copy of the guide from there. I'm currently updating it with all the new leopards seen over december.

Khomani see at 13 borehole on the 27 Decmber 2011 - have emailed updated excel file to you AstroMatt

She was on the opposite bank and photos are heavily cropped

@Jan van Wyk - Great pix and great sightings of the Auchterlonie female and her cub. Thanx for posting!

@Duke - Thanx for the pix and with the ID, Khomani. Now you and Sharifa have seen both Miera and her mom!

OK, so i had an interesting picture sent to me to ID from p@m.
I've decided that it would make the perfect photo for an ID challenge. To keep it fun for everyone please pm me your answer before Saturday morning. I shall then post the answer and who got it right. To add a little spice to the mix the first person to get the correct answer to me can suggest a name for the new Dikbaardskolk Cub No.2 (will be in the new version of the guide).

So below is p@m's photo. As a starting hint it was taken in the Nossob river.


Happy IDing and goodluck

Hi,

Its the first time I read this thread and found that you guys are really lucky with leopards. My first two in KTP was spotted in 2006 and thereafter we did not have much luck. During Dec we saw one leopard near Geinab. We visited Dikbaardskolk 3 times and now luck like AstroMatt. Below is my speckle of a leopard.

Old pics from 2006 near Munro.





Latest sighting on 5 Dec north of Grootkolk near Geinab

Welcome to the ID thread Son Godin. You had me slightly confused for a second with your pics .
Both the first two leopards you have seen near Munro are the famous Maja . However, your first picture has been reflected and is actually showing her right hand side .

The last picture is unfortunately going to be too hard to ID but great sighting

If you have the time could you fill these sighting details in on the spreadsheet downloadable from my site and send it to me.
Thanks

@Son godin - Lovely sighting of Maja. When did you see her in 2006?



Wish I could say 'slightly confused for a second' I knew I had seen that heart and comma before, but could not place it. Well done AstroMatt!

As far as the ID challenge goes - Good Luck Forumites!

Reporting back on the ID Challenge:



This was Safran, seen by p@m on the 29th October 2010, near Kannaguass.



(Compare the spot patterns on the visible parts of her back leg/bum. )Thank you p@m!

As we have had a few comments about forumites struggling with IDing, an easier ID challenge will be posted in the near future!

Thanks Wanderw for posting the answer to the challenge, maybe an easier ID pic would be better to start things off.

To help in that matter i just wanted to let people know that the newest version of the guide is now up on my site.
Whats been updated?
There are a bunch of new leopards included, new photos for older leopards (better pic quality, brighter), some updates to ranges and general information. We also now know who Langklaas's mother is and so that is updated, but i'll also post separately here about that.
We have also finalised the names of some of the more recently added leopards. There are still a couple that need new names but i am waiting for some people to get back to me on them so there might be some more changes in a while.

But for the moment i would say this guide is significantly different and more extensive than the past one so probably best downloading it and binning the old version.

Any questions etc please feel free to PM me.

http://www.ast.uct.ac.za/~schurch/leopards/

Hi,

The sighting was on a freezing cold winter's morning in July 2006. We saw two leopards in the tree not far from Munro. I will be able to find the tree again, but difficult to give GPS points now. Its a few 100m after a No_entry road on the southern side of the road. I need to find the originals to give you exact times.

Here are some more pics of the two leopards. One was looking towards us lower down the tree, while the other one was eating on a springbok kill on top of a weavers nest:







The leopards did not enjoy our attention and got out of the tree and walked towards the dunes.

@Son godin - Many thanks for the extra info!
Your first 2 pix are of Maja - AstroMatt also IDed her before.
Your last 2 pix are of the Leeudril Male. We have not got many sightings of him, so this is a great help. A super sighting of the two leopards!

Will try to post a new ID Challenge later this evening, so that forumites can try out AstroMatt's new edition of the ID Booklet!

Thanks for the info WanderW,

For one moment I thought it was Maja's mum, but the last of the pics shows its indeed a male. Does this means the Leeudril male is the father of Maja's offspring a few years back.

New ID Challenge!

Pic taken by Caracal on the Auob side of KTP!



Any takers?

@Son godin - The Leeudril Male is the father of Jannie(born approx April 2007). However, we think the father of Kruiper(born approx July 2008) is the Houmoed Male (seen mating with Maja at the beginning of April 2008).