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WOW...what a series of sightings you've had AFRICAT. You really hit the gold when you stayed in Grootkolk in 2009! All of Wanderw's ID's of your leopards are 100% correct (as you'd expect )

Its really nice to start hearing more about what happens up north in the park. There are a lot fewer visitors that way so your sightings are really important.

If you still can't get hold of my spreadsheet then PM me and i'll get one sent to you...and again thanks for reporting these sightings.

I have a sighting of my own to report too.
27/05/2012 Just south of Rooibrak.
We left Urikaruus and picked up some leopard tracks quite quickly. After a while we caught up with Miera on the calcrete ridge. She then came down, crossed behind our car and headed across the river to hassel a few jackals. I was so happy as i'd seen her almost a year before.

Unfortunately i seem to be having problems putting a pic in from picasa...not reading the image size. Will try and get it up soon.

Still not able to use Picasa to put the pics up to had to resort to other means. Here is a picture of Miera from my May sighting.
Enjoy!

Fantastic Africat.................

AstroMatt, I'm so glad you got to see Miera again.............she is my all time favorite leopard!!!!

Lovely pic AstroMatt!
Miera has grown into a beautiful leopard!

We had some great leopard sightings during our stay in April / May 2012. We were very happy about it.


19 April 2012 (19:40) - ??
Waterhole Urikaruus camp. Unfortunately, this pic are not of good quality.



20 April 2012 (17:30) – MIERA
1.5km north from "Montrose".
We are that time entire alone with the leopard. We can observe them for a long time. A magnificent experience.











23 April 2012 (11:00) – ??
A leopard with prey between "Samevloeiing" and "Leeuwdril".
The leopard was far away, so that we cannot identify him/her.



23 April 2012 (17:15) – MIERA
We came from Kieliekrankie. MIERA was crossing the lower dune road (just before the Auob road).
She goes to the south and disappeared over the dune. We hope that she wants to "Auchterlonie".
And ... correct. Approximately an hour later she arrived there for a drink.







1 May 2012 (17:00) - LANGKLAAS
The leopard lies in the large tree on the other side of the street vis-à-vis of the “Cubitje Quap“ waterhole.




~~~~~~~~~~~~
An old sighting
31 August 2008 (13:00) – SAFRAN
100.6 km north from Nossob in the Nossob river bed.


Thanks AstroMatt for your great leopard ID guide.
I hope, I have correctly identified the leopards.

Best regards
Benno & Ina
(PS: Sorry, but my English is not the best.)

inado, what a festival
thanks for all these pictures... specialy Safran... for me
Miera is realy fabulous

@inado - Spot on with your Ids! Thank you for posting all your leopard sightings.

What fantastic sightings and pix of Miera!
Langklaas - great sighting too! We now know that she was at Cubitje Quap on the 1st of May!( A leopard and cub was seen half way between Nossob and Cubitje in mid April)
Safran - you are now the first people to have seen Safran! She was previously ‘first seen’ on the 23rd of September 2008. Historical sightings are very important - they help determine relationships and ages of leopards.

Your sightings and pix on the 19th April(at Urikaruus) and the 23rd April(between Samevloeiing and Leeudril) - Could I please ask you to send your original pix to AstroMatt - for a possibility that they could be IDed.
Lastly, could you please fill out AstroMatt’s spreadsheet for the project. You will find AstroMatt’s e-mail and spreadsheet(under 'KTP leopard sightings') in the following link

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

Again, thank you for sharing your sightings and pix on this thread!

Great sightings inado Miera really is a lovely leo and so happy to be on show. I feel quite spoilt when i have a sighting of her. Really well done with all the ID's. Its great to see that the guide is working and allowing successful identifications.

If you can send me the original pics of the two you've struggled with then i might be able to spot a pattern and make an ID. As Wanderw said if you could also fill in the spread sheet then i can take all the details of the sightings without making any mistakes. Again thanks for your help.

Must say there are some beautiful photos here Thanks all

@ GavinW: Hi there Gavin, We saw this fellow not far from Leeudril on the 28th April this year at about 10am. When I looked at the pictures you have taken at Leeudril just a few days later, (look at the ring of spots around the neck), it would appear that it could be the same leopard, only difference is that mine is distinctly male! If yours is a female, there must be a (possible) mating pair and therefore two leo's in the same area at the time!

Hi FMJ

Here is a pic of our leopard seen near Leeudril. The boffins tend to think it is a new leopard. any other comments?

Thanks for posting the sighting Fotomaljohan , and thanks for reposting your pic GavinW.
So you did correctly identify your leopard with GavinW's and it is indeed a new leopard (already included in the newest version of the guide, but not out yet). We had been wondering about whether it was a male or female as i had heard mixed reports but i think your photos are quite clear as to the answer

Would you mind sending me your sighting (on my spreadsheet) and the original pics so that i could some of them in the guide.
Many thanks and keep the sightings coming

@Fotomaljohan - Lovely sighting and pix of the new Leeudril leopard. Thank you for clarifying that this leo is a male.

ALL forumites sightings and posts are extremely important to this thread and the project, so if anybody out there has seen a leopard recently or historically, please post!

We saw these two about 3k's N of Houmoed on Wed 20th June. When we came back to TR after spending some time at Nossob we were told by a few people that there had been a leopard on a kill in a tree right next to the road the whole of the previous day but that it had gone by the time we arrived that Tuesday afternoon. Needless to say we were rather dissapointed but hey, its the Kalahari and we know that timing is everything ...

We decided to do the Leeudril 4x4 trail after our morning drive on Wednesday ( I drove it and it was BRILLIANT ) and we headed north towards Auchterlonie for tea - needless to say we never got there ... Elf spotted a few spots in a tree ... we stopped ..... and she came down and we spent about 45 min with her all to ourselves before the next car arrived ...

Cagn ...



and while we were watching her I suddenly looked up and there about 50m away in the road in front of us was ...



Cagn's mother - the Auchterlonie female We only managed to get a few shots before she wandered off across the riverbed. Sorry about the side of the car in the shot - too many photographers in the same car !!!

We originally thought she was smaller than Cagn but in retrospect Cagn might have just looked bigger seeing as she was about 5 metres away from us and her mom wasn't . The light was pretty bad at times - we had 3 days of rain and this was one of them ....

Fabulous fabulous ... ( oh yes, and on the morning drive we had 3 cheetahs and after the leopards, 2 different lion sightings - 1 + 7 ) LOVE THE KGALAGADI

@Scouter - Super sighting and pix of Cagn and her mom! Very few people get to have a leopard for company for 45 minutes! Thanx for posting!