Category Archives: Botswana

Leopard Tracking

During our stay in Botswana, we spent about a week split between two separate camps in the Okavango Delta. While the first camp was more populated by water buffalo and elephants, the second camp had many more big cats. On one of our last days, our guide spotted a female leopard, and then spotted a juvenile male, who we assumed was the females cub. We spent most of the morning tracking these two through the bush, culminating in the female tracking, hunting and finally catching a squirrel as a snack.

This particular shot was near the end of our tracking, and caught the little male weaving in and out of trees. We stopped near a large tree, in hopes that we could catch him paying on the branches, but no luck, he wasn’t interested. It was really fun to just watch these two as they walked and walked in search of each other, or their next snack.

Nikon D600 | Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 | 200mm | f/3.3 | 1/1500th | ISO800

Tracking a Leopard

Botswana is home to a pretty large number of leopards in the wild.  They are among the most elusive cats in the wild. We were lucky enough to track a small group. This group had a ‘teenage’ male, a couple of females, and a couple of cubs.  As we got close to these cats, we could clearly see how powerful and thick these cats were.  They appeared to be just solid muscle, all the way through.  It was so fun to track these guys through the bush.

Nikon D600 | 70-200 mm | f/3.3 | 1/1500th | ISO800

Sunset in Botswana

Our last evening on our most recent trip was capped off by sundowner drinks around the safari truck.  Most of the sunset drives didn’t have great colors. This was due to dust in the air. Fires around the area also led to smoke in the air.  This evening was nearly perfect though, and was a great send off to a great week in Botswana. The moon was just showing through and the color was bright.

Sony AR7 II | Sony FE 70-200 f/4.0 | 71 mm | f/4.0 | 1/125 | ISO6400