Indian wildlife- Leopard comes for a drink (Nagzira)

We were extremely lucky to have spotted this leopard in Nagzira on Feb 12, 2010, that too from our guest house. It was almost dusk when suddenly cheetal alarm calls were heard from a hillock on the other side of Nilay guest house in Nagzira. Our guide asked us to watch out. We could see the cheetals giving out sharp calls and stamping their hoofs on the ground in the manner typical when they sense danger. The calls continued for several minutes before this adult leopard made an appearance from behind the foliage on the hillock. It was extremely cautious, making several stops along the way to the water line. It must have been very thirsty as it had a long drink. It then climbed back some distance on the hillock, stepping up on a tree probably to sniff out the scent marking of other animals, went to another tree and marked its own scent. Hovered around for a few seconds before disappearing behind the thick foliage. It was around for about 15 minutes, easily our best sighting of a leopard ever.
Please excuse the camera shake, as I was trying to take close ups from about 250 feet-- the breadth of water body that separated us from the leopard. Also, it was falling light and camera's depth of field was very small, hence it was finding it difficult to focus on the subject amidst trees. Also please excuse the excited whispers of our guide Baburao and some of us who were seeing a leopard in the wild for the first time.
Nagzira is a small (152 sq km) but rich wildlife sanctuary in Gondia district of Vidarbha, about 125 km from Nagpur. It has about eight leopards and an equal number of tigers. Luckily it has a good prey base of cheetals, sambar deer, and wild boars plus some herds of magnificent gaurs (Indian bison). Like most habitats of major carnivores, this one too is threatened with human activities like illegal felling, grazing, and poaching. It badly needs to be expanded and protected.

Category:

Pets & Animals

Tags:

• leopard
• tiger
• wildlife
• india
• vidarbha
• nagpur
• gondia
• bhandara
• forest
• green
• cover
• ecotourism
• conservation
• endangered
• species
• rare
• sighting

[pashu4you]

super sighting, congrats. i pray to god for such sighting, i wud hv emptied all my 32Gb here

[electroparth]

When you see leopard on wild. You are lucky Person .Good luck

[nitindya014]

Good job. we were also there at Nagzira on 6th Feb 2010 when we saw probably the same leopard crossing the jungle road and hid just besides our car in the bushes, 4-5 feet away from us as were stopped n it vanished. We were so excited to see it, but none of us could get a click of it, though we had 3-4 cameras... U were Lucky!!!

[skpd71]

Absolutely fantastic...!You guys saw leopard during day time....

[biestie]

That's fantastic! You can consider yourself pretty lucky!

[virgoptrex]

nice video.....who is that idiot in background who cannot differentiate tiger and leopard............