Living Luangwa - Patrick Bentley's Blog » Leopards

Exhibition closes

Patrick Bentley — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 10:22:11 +0000

It has been a very busy month for me but my exhibition has now come to an end and things are quietening down just in time for Christmas. The exhibition was a great success – it was titled ‘Living Luangwa’ and featured 50 of my favourite images from my last 4 years work in the Luangwa valley. Here are a few of the most popular photographs although seeing them at web size doesn’t do them justice – printed large, framed and lit well makes all the difference..

Hollywood

Clash of the Titans

Kaingo

Broken Mopane

Kakuli

Milky way

Making waves

Geronimo!

Wet feet

Lashes

Skimming

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Spots!

Patrick Bentley — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 07:54:39 +0000

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Thirsty leopard

Patrick Bentley — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 11:58:38 +0000

It can be tough getting good images of leopards in daylight as they are often in the shade or hidden away in thick vegetation – so to have one walking around in the early morning sunlight today was a wonderful sight. When I came across this young female she had been feeding on her kill in a dense combretum thicket and was heading down to a nearby lagoon for a drink.

Once she had quenched her thirst she jumped over the water and headed off into the bush behind me – a lovely sighting.

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Night-time leopard

Patrick Bentley — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 13:44:24 +0000

The leopard sightings this year have not been as good as usual until a couple weeks ago when they suddenly started to improve. This image is of a lovely female that was walking around near camp last night calling for her cub. We stayed with her for at least an hour but there was no sign of the cub..

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First leopard of the season

Patrick Bentley — Wed, 27 May 2009 10:53:51 +0000

He was a shy young male that I found this morning hiding under a bush and watching his kill being devoured by a hyaena. I sat and watched for nearly an hour while the hyaena polished off a huge amount of the kill – a large puku ram. Eventually the hyaena sloped off with a large chunk of meat and it’s belly dragging on the ground! The leopard quickly came out of hiding, grabbed what was left and with incredible strength pulled it about a hundred metres into some very thick combretum bushes.

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Leopard portrait

Patrick Bentley — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 14:54:29 +0000

I have been taking advantage of the bad weather and slowly wading my way through last season’s images. As usual I have deleted a huge number and am now onto processing the remainder for prints, stock etc. The last few days has been leopards – here is a portrait shot of a beautiful female from today’s files.

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Leopard kill

Patrick Bentley — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 17:13:54 +0000

Although the game viewing is excellent at the moment our leopard sightings have dropped quite a lot in the last few weeks. I think it might be due to the heat as this is often the case at this time of the year with the leopards only becoming active later at night. There is also a lot of lion activity in the area which seems to make them more cautious.

We came across this small female leopard hunting some impala out on an open plain. She soon made a kill but didn’t want to risk having it stolen by hyaenas and so quickly dragged it away and up the nearest tree. This was quite a struggle as the impala was easily the same size and probably heavier than the leopard…

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Leopard at night

Patrick Bentley — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 12:13:55 +0000

This is one of my favourite leopard images that I’ve taken recently. I’m always looking at ways of photographing wildlife in a unique and different way and this is the kind of photograph that I am after. I love the vignetting (darkened corners) caused by the spotlight and the bold shadow of the leopard. Her cub was standing a few feet away in the darkness which is why she is looking back over her shoulder.

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A sad day..

Patrick Bentley — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 10:45:40 +0000

I guess it is a mistake to get emotionally attached to the wild animals that I observe and photograph regularly as it can sometimes be heart breaking – as last night proved. A large male leopard entered the territory of the lovely female pictured in a previous post (Sept 14) and killed one of her cubs (the one with the muddy feet). I have been getting to know these cubs quite well over the last few weeks and this one was very playful and friendly. Her brother who is smaller and a lot shyer survived the attack. Here he is having a drink with his mother.

The reason the male killed the cub is because she is not his and this way he forces the female to come into oestrus so that he can then sire his own cubs with her. I just hope the mother can keep her remaining cub safe..

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Leopard and cubs

Patrick Bentley — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:14:15 +0000

I have been seeing this lovely female leopard and her two cubs fairly regularly over the last week. Most of the sightings have been at night or in very poor light so it was great to come across them in sunshine early this morning as they were crossing Fish eagle lagoon (now nearly dried up).

The mother is a very relaxed leopard and doesn’t mind being approached by the vehicle. The cubs are still quite shy though and were running from one bush to another and keeping their distance.

At one point she led them over a muddy patch of ground which she was able to jump over but the cubs had to walk through it covering their legs in mud.