I wrote a while back about a female leopard who was rearing two cubs near to camp. The family haven’t been seen for quite a while and we’ve been wondering about their progress. We knew that the male cub was showing much more signs of independence than the female, so we were expecting that we might find him on his own somewhere, but even he didn’t show up.
The other night, I spotted some very bright eyes in the spotlight and we drove around to have a look. Out of the bush popped the female cub, who has grown considerably in the last 6 weeks, and is now approaching the size of her mother. She didn’t seem to be very comfortable though, coughing and sneezing regularly and eating large quantities of grass. She didn’t roll or groom herself as we’ve so often seen her doing, so we watched her for a while and then left her in peace.
Even the way she looked at us as she appeared from the bush was not how I expected; she’s usually very relaxed but this time she looked more wary.
We’ll keep and eye out for her and check on her progress.
