Easy pickings

A few evenings ago we where following the big dominant male leopard at kirkmans(Tjellahanga male). It was just after dark, and he was on the hunt. He walked up to a mud wallow, where two Egyptian geese were swimming. He looked at them very intently, and all the sudden started running around the mud wallow, and past the geese. The two weeks before, we had watched this pair of Egyptian geese raise 8 young. These young ones where now hiding in the high grass, and had been spotted by the leopard. He pounced on them killing two at once. Than he started plucking them, before eating them. That however was not enough for him, as he got up, pounced on another one, and did everything over again. When we returned in the morning we saw that the geese where swimming on the pan, with only two youngsters left. The leopard must have decided that they where easy pickings and ate six of them.

Posted: Kirkman's Kamp by Markus Schroeder, Date: 17 February 2010