Is today (3rd May). This is a young leopard photographed last year in the Timbavati Reserve, South Africa:

Love cats, especially big ones, great image!

Here are a couple of mine 2 each of Athena and Lorogogol (Maasai Mara March 2023)

Glimpse of a Leopard as it peers through the vegetation.



At the beginning of a Hunt..... Vibrissae tuned in

It's typical to only see the pugmarks of resident leopards, despite spending many months or years in their habitat


“And your soft and secret footfalls

Print the pattern of your life,

A single line of Pugmarks

Half-across a world at strife

Remote from herded panic

You survive to hunt alone

To stalk yet unencumbered

And to walk by Wild Alone”

To The Leopard by Peter Turnbull-Kemp, 1966 in his monograph, The Leopard

Great thread! Wild cats (both big and small) are my favorite animals. I am envious of your amazing shots taken in the wild. I have never been to a place with wild leopards, so I hope no one minds if I post a few zoo photos. In order, they are Sri Lanka leopard at Le Parc Des Felins, Amur leopard cub at San Diego Zoo, black leopard cub at Project Survival's Cat Haven.

A legendary female leopard Legadema, a role and an actress in Dereck and Beverly Joubert's film "Eye of the leopard" :

in 2013 I visited Mombo Camp in Botswana in hope to see that cat. She was already 12 years old.
Today I would not visit Mombo again because the rates become very high and I assume she is not alive anymore.

The next known leopards are Tiyani, her mother Salayexe and father Tingana from Sabi Sands, Kruger. Those who have been to Sabi Sands definitely heard and saw those cats. Unfortunately Salayexe passed away a few years ago. But I met them in 2016. Here mother and daughter are playing (Tiyani is about 1 year old):


Here is the whole family (Salayexe, Tiyani and Tingana). Do you see three leopards on the picture? ;-)

Tingana came and took over a meal from mom and daughter. But they didn't mind ;-) and it looked like a peaceful family where ladies prepared the meal for the father and waited for him ;-)

And one more leopard who was veery know and who cooperated with photographers is Mma Tsebe from Khwai, Botswana.

I don't know if she is still alive. Maybe not. But she took care very well about leopard population in Khwai.

And here is a female leopard from my last trip to Zimbabwe:


All of them are gorgeous cats!

Maasai Mara, August, 2022. Barely caught this guy as he quickly headed up the tree to his catch.