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Inkweli female leopard ( Zulu word for "One who climbs" ) PART 1
An urgent message from a Section Manager recently, sent me off to meet him out in the bush at a particular point. His Alien Plant Control team had been working in an area spraying herbicide with knapsack sprayers when they spotted a leopard dragging a freshly killed male impala across the road. The team moved out of the area to a new destination so as not to disturb the animal. After guiding me to the area he had last seen her the manager moved off to allow me to carry on with my work.
The leopard had dragged the kill to a tree close to the opposite side of the road and then turned around and scraped grass in an attempt to cover the impala to avoid easy detection from above by vultures and other birds of prey. The reason leopard here do not always 'tree' their kills is due to the lack of large concentrations of predators like lion and hyaena that would normally pressurise them into doing so.
This female leopard has become a part of my habituation program that I started recently in our area of the reserve. The aim and goal is to over a period of time encourage the animal to become accustomed to game drive vehicles through careful, consistent habituation techniques used in association with their behaviour.
We use the old age technique of tracking the individual leopard on a daily basis if possible, to make sure we keep a fairly regular contact with them. If the leopard makes a kill it keeps them fixed in a place for a few days and allows us to spend some time with them. Patience is the name of the game here. My Zulu tracker / assistant and I take turns in sitting in a vehicle within close proximity to the leopard without encroaching in their space. We may not even see them for most of the day but have to rely that they are around. Over time they begin to expose themselves more and more as they become comfortable with our presence. At night they are a little more confident.
The reason we choose females to habituate is due to the fact that if they adapt well to the viewing process all her cubs will eventually follow suit through a learned behaviour.
As we know all leopard love trees. Well this female is one of the most pleasurable leopard to habituate as she seems to resort to lying in a tree for most of the day. The bonus is of course that we can view her for most of the time we are with her. Due to this love of trees I named her Inkweli (one who climbs). She does not always lie in the same tree and alternates as shown in the images above often blending seamlessly into the trees cover.
On the afternoon of the third day two pied crows found her and preceded to make her quiet time miserable by constantly calling and flushing her. In one image above you can see her snarling at them. Eventually even I was getting irritated and wishing for a shotgun to end the racket. It was almost as if they were trying to get her to move so that she would eventually show them where the kill was stashed.
The IQ is not great as I had to view her from far for the first few days and when getting an opportunity to photograph her I was concentrating on first identifying her whisker and facial pattern for ID purposes.
Hope you enjoy. There is more to come!
