Of all the animals one can photograph in Africa, none elicits a breathless response more than the leopard. They are the elusive, shadow-dwelling mythic cousin of the more reassuring lion. Hard to find, dangerous and stunningly beautiful in equal measure, they were the primary focus of our trip to the Central Belt of Namibia.
These majestic animals, beloved of safari photographers and one of the most striking species on the continent are found across all of Africa's biomes. Leopards are the widest distributed of any cat, with regional subspecies spread across the whole of Africa (extirpated from the Saharan belt) and much of South, Central and Eastern Asia and some of the accompanying islands.
The Sub-Saharan subspecies is the African Leopard, typically found lurking up camelthorn trees in the daytime, surveying grasses for favoured prey of young ungulates or warthogs. The desert is a less common but not unheard of home to the species, such that they are found even in the scorching temperatures and shadeless martian landscape of Damaraland and the Kaokoveld. Only the southern wasteland of !Karas seems less appealing to an animal capable of blending in to any background.
By their nature, finding leopards is a considerable challenge. As an ambush predator unparalleled in their ability to operate covertly, on a continent filled with merit-worthy contenders, the leopard holds a very special place in the heart of most African wildlife photographers. The classic shot, framed in a tree with twilight or dusk moonlight casting a blue fade over the image, is safari icon that typically only the very dedicated (and wealthy) can achieve.
The ultra-exclusive microreserves lining the banks of the Timbavati River, itself dividing the Kruger National Park from Mpumalanga's lowveld regions, are typically the easiest place to capture such a shot as well paid guides idle out to the designated leopard trees on the morning's game drive, but one must question the legitimacy of so called 'wild' leopard shots - indeed, what in such a setup as we see across South Africa these days can be regarded as truly wild outside of the official National Parks system?
Forgoing such luxurious opportunities, our efforts concentrated on the somewhat more desolate and wild landscapes of Namibia - the Central Plateau belt spanning the middle of the country, and in particular the relatively vegetation and relief-rich regions of Otjozondjupa and eastern Erongo, offer the potential for excellent leopard sightings. Leopards stalk designated patches across these regions and much of Namibia and neighbouring Botswana are divided up into small territorial patches dominated by a single animal.
Little is known about much of the African Leopard's life history and particularly the interactions it has with other members of its own species. Our rank inability to study animals at night up until very recently (owing to significant advances in infrared and night-vision camera technology) has hampered efforts to make progress in our understanding of such a nocturnal species. Tagging and tracking of wild leopards is a full time job for many rangers across the Sub-Saharan region but even then only a handful of the less elusive animals in a given area can be involved in a study.
We focused our efforts on the colossal reserve of Okonjima, one of Namibia's many pseudo-National Park areas spanning over twenty thousand hectares. Like other similar projects, the reserve is an amalgamation of previous farmland whose fences were dropped and the landscape essentially rewilded. Many of the animals in Okonjima are managed to some degree by introductions and game capture and release efforts, but leopards typically elude such management and the population spanning the region is broadly a natural distribution of individuals each with their own set territory.
Increasingly, due to their precipitous decline in recent decades, Africa's large carnivores are being darted and radio collared by authorities hoping to protect and understand their living tourist dollars. Wild populations of lions, cheetahs, hyenas and especially wild dogs have all crashed to near extinction in many parts of Africa. Leopards seem to have fared a little better than the others, but our knowledge of them is by far the least complete compared to the other species owing to the difficulties studying them.
Arriving after an uncharacteristically torrential downpour (Africa's experience of climate change seems to involve lurching from years of drought to sudden flash-flooding and damp misery - both are wreaking havoc on human and wildlife populations alike), we had been told to take a boat with us if we were heading north on the highway out of Windhoek. Fortunately this proved exaggeration and our off-road special was able to easily navigate the admittedly deep puddles covering the roads into Okonjima.
We made our way through the reserve, pausing for zebras, sable and hartebeest, and warned by some of the most unusual roadsigns we had ever seen. Eventually we climbed up out of the low sandy flats and made our way up the boulder strewn trail to our campground in the Omboroko mountains, which also happened to be prime leopard territory.
Our camp was set up in searing heat on a shallow bed of sand, and the park wardens had thoughtfully established a sheltered area for cooking and escaping the scorching sun. We took respite from the worst of it (the Namibian midday is not a productive period) admiring a pair of Monteiro's hornbills that had deigned to join our camp, most likely to see if we had left anything unattended. This species, with a sunbleached red and black attire, is iconic of Namibia's superlative level of endemic birdlife and is found principally across the Central Belt region.
Once the angle of the sun was lower and the gorgeous luminescent evening orange-green-yellow-brown oversaturated filter was placed over the landscape we met our resident guide and fellow leopard aficionado Igwe who gave us a rundown on the land and the evasive behaviour of the leopards who inhabited it. In his "office" as he described it, we were soon meandering along recently collapsed soft-sand walls above riverbeds and through thick semi-arid bushveld heavy with the lofty greens of the rainy season
Okonjima uses radio tracking to loosely identify the rough location of the few leopards that have been tagged, but telemetry tracking is an imprecise science and frequently frustrated by signal losses and, most commonly, impenetrable or obstructive landscape obstacles. In such dense vegetation tracking big cats, telemetry or no, can be exceptionally challenging. Leopards are ambush killers; in conjunction with their South American and Himalayan counterparts the puma and snow leopard respectively, their capacity to hide is supremely impressive.
In the late evening sun we rolled carefully across a relatively sparse area of scrub known as Lionseep. Devoid of its namesake, a herd of distant Red Hartebeest nonetheless looked wary. March is the season for new family members among many prey species of Southern Africa. A warthog and her miniature replica were shuffling through cracked mud in the distance. Spotting a minute defect in a nearby tree I raised a pair of borrowed binoculars, in fact as a double take in order to wipe gritty sweat from the eyepieces.
Sitting in a camelthorn tree, blended almost perfectly into the spiked and leafy branches, and fixedly gazing at the juvenile warthog was a leopard. Igwe's skill had hit home and we all sat breathlessly waiting for the next move. I was entranced - a wild leopard in the glory of Namibia's sharper than sharp sunset light. The distance between us was considerable, but through zoomed lenses, sated from the frustrating mirage artifacts by a cooler ambient temperature, we could see every tiny movement.
Steadily she leaned forward and made to descend the tree trunk in a swift move. Time froze and a cloud of dust erupted from the warthogs. Bolting faster than I could have imagined, they vanished into the bush. The leopard stood blinking, still clutching the top of the tree trunk before slowly descending and slinking off in the same direction as the warthogs. Foiled this time, but probably not for long.
The rest of our evening was spent idling through the overgrown scrubland sighting birds of all kinds, Namibia's high-contrast Mountain Zebras and herds of wildebeest, kudu and giraffes all sporting newborns additions of their own. Retiring to our camp for the obligatory boerewors and sweeter-than-sweet yams cooked in a fire, we were about to climb into bed when an African Porcupine emerged from our firewood supply. Huge in build, he proceeded to circle our camp and, after a moment contemplating us in solid blackness, wandered off into the night.
Early in the morning we reviewed the infrared camera's work overnight. Not a lot, but a mysterious small cat was visible lurking in the shadows of some of the pictures. We didn't have to wait long to establish an identity - as we worked our way through a packet of condensed milk rusks a small cat nervously ran across our camp. Far too bizarrely patterned for any domestic cat, we realised it was that age-old feline compatriot to the more commonly known dog; it was an African Wild Cat - thought to be the 'original cat' by some evolutionary biologists. It didn't stay long, and shuffled off up the side of our camp to escape the day.
Shortly afterwards we were bobbing along the 'road' through Igwe's office. The torrential rains of the preceding weeks had semi-liquefied the normally parched earth of Otjozondjupa; off-road driving meant sinking to nearly tyre's depth into what resembled a firm gritty liquid. Particular caution had to be taken around the collapsing, vertical banks of the makeshift river system that seasonally forged its way through the reserve.
Mist was still over the Omboroko and there was a slight cold dew in the air; always welcome between the tropic lines in Africa. My wife called a halt to the vehicle, somehow having spotted a pair of fluffy ears poking above waist high grass at great distance. We cautiously made our way over the liquid sand to find a large, very relaxed male leopard. He rolled over, exposing all four paws before reluctantly standing and lumbering, shoulders rolling, past the side of our open landcruiser.
I could hardly believe my eyes - Africa's most vicious assassin essentially at ease with us. We sat in awe for what seemed only a few minutes but was actually forty or so before he paced of back into the bush and we lost sight of his tree trunk tail flopping from one left to right. Some trouble maneouvering afterwards (we had half sunk in sand), and we pulled onto the flooded main road before being intercepted by a pack of Namibia's dark grey Chacma Baboons, who are always game for a laugh.
The sun flashed yellow and cut through the remaining mist, signalling time to hide out at our base camp. Even in the relative verdence of the mountains, one should avoid the severity of Namibia's aggressive summer heat. Photographically, Southern Africa is a challenge at midday in any case - flat, washed out images and warping mirages at any distance make images experimental at best. There's a reason all the great African wildlife photography is taken late in the evening or early in the morning (and, increasingly, in the middle of the night with ultra-ISO cameras).
After a fruitless effort to sleep (too hot), we set off again perhaps a little too early in the afternoon, but we were eager to see more leopards. Of course, the leopards stay hidden in these conditions too so there's little point making such effort. For several hours we hiked some of the trails through the reservation. Most animals are subdued at this time of day, but we took time to enjoy the miniature safari most visitors ignore - namely the caterpillars, beetles and millipedes amongst many other bugs.
Striding to the edge of the Omboroko, we looked down from the plateau onto a vast flat plain punctured with thorn acacias and criss-crossed by shallow waterways. The famous Waterberg Plateau could be seen on the horizon. At first the view looked static, but after a few minutes we realised there was movement: herds of giraffes, wildebeest and zebras. Baboons darted between trees. A cloud of dust from another off-road vehicle. The scene was utterly alive despite the afternoon heat.
Realising our backs were exposed in a landscape dense with vegetation and leopards alike, we climbed back into our cruiser and rolled down the steep road. Back in the orange evening light, we headed up to Lionseep to resume leopard tracking, and slowly made our way up north to the dam. We had heard a young female leopard had been tending a pair of cubs but they were proving difficult to find even with radio telemetry.
The road north took us past kudu, hartebeest and mountain zebras, and on muddy tracks replete with diving korhaans and the ubiquitous warthog trios. Termite mounds spiraled up from the ground, the orange towers betraying a colossal underground network of insects. In many places the mounds had taken over entire trees. Igwe had warned us to beware the mounds that looked to have collapsed, studded with holes; these he told us could be home to arguably Africa's true king of terror: the black mamba. Thankfully we never saw one (rare for me to be grateful to not see an animal), but their combination of speed, size and aggression makes them particularly dangerous.
We found the young mother striding, back to the sunset, across a flat termite-mound studded clearing in low scrubland. She was without the cubs, but it is common for leopard mothers to leave their cubs in a secure location for days on end and to return later with food. We idled behind her keeping a decent distance as her rosette-decorated back bobbed above the grassline, with everything tinted golden orange in the low angled light.
With immense gratitude I was fortunate enough to catch her approaching a nearby termite mound, and, casting a perfect framing of orange, green and almost-blue shadowing she turned to look the camera dead on, and in doing so created a wonderful series of images; such photos summed up our gold-tinted rainy season evenings in the Namibian Central Belt. In an instant the frame was broken and she moved on to play with a branch of a nearby tree.
Late evening is a warning siren across Africa's grasslands and tonight was no exception. In no time at all we saw groupings of zebras, wildebeest and gemsbok gathering around their recently born offspring; a semi-effective shield against the horrors of the African night; not least as a result of the pitch black ambush hunting patterns employed by leopards.
Sighting the world's iconic big cats is always a rare thing of staggering beauty. Many are under severe threat of extinction in our ever deteriorating natural world; leopards included. What a pleasure to be permitted to see such wonders in their wilderness surround, and to brush the same grassland paths as Africa's own expert in hidden travels, terrible power and breathtaking poise.
All photography © Chris Milligan Photo. All views are my own. Seek local recommendations before photographing or approaching any wildlife.
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