Leopards Mating: -
Pench has always been a good place to look for the more illusive big cat the leopard, there is a healthy population of leopards in most of the national parks in central India but out of all these parks pench is the best place to look for it. The main reason for more leopard sightings in pench is that the tiger population here is not as high as bandhavgarh or kanha and that gives the leopard more freedom to roam around freely.
It was an early morning in the beginning of February, we were driving on the hilly jodamunara road inside the pench national park, I was driving and had decided to take this road because there were good leopard sightings happening on this road. We were a big group of naturalists in our vehicle including seth who had just come down from phinda south Africa. As we were driving on the curvy road studded with big rock boulders, we came to a turning where our park guide pointed to a rock and said leopard and I immediately noticed the movement on the rock , I slowly rolled the vehicle and stopped it at a comfortable distance from the predator who was sitting impressively on top of a big rock boulder.
We noticed that this leopard was bleeding on the face, just over where the whiskers are. After a minute or two we noticed that there was another leopard which was looking at us from behind the rock, this one looked shy and smaller than the one sitting on the rock which was calm and least bothered by our presence. The smaller leopard was a female and soon enough we realized that they were courting. Seth who was the most experienced amongst us was the first to notice, soon we heard the male leopard, which was on the rock “sawing”. Within a few seconds the female too came up on the rock with her eyes fixed on us, we were excited about what was going to happen and we soon saw what we were hoping to see, we saw these leopards mate which is a rare sight to find in the Indian jungles.
This courtship and mating lasted for around 30 minutes, the female used to come on the rock and then disappear behind it again; this female looked like a very young one and it was probably her first mating. The male leopard was big and looked like a dominant male, the blood on its face could have been due to two reasons either while in the courtship the female had injured him or it was a fight with another male leopard.
What we had witnessed was something spectacular and now I am hoping to see this female with her new cubs.
Himanshu Rathore
(Naturalist Baghvan Pench)
Pench has always been a good place to look for the more illusive big cat the leopard, there is a healthy population of leopards in most of the national parks in central India but out of all these parks pench is the best place to look for it. The main reason for more leopard sightings in pench is that the tiger population here is not as high as bandhavgarh or kanha and that gives the leopard more freedom to roam around freely.
It was an early morning in the beginning of February, we were driving on the hilly jodamunara road inside the pench national park, I was driving and had decided to take this road because there were good leopard sightings happening on this road. We were a big group of naturalists in our vehicle including seth who had just come down from phinda south Africa. As we were driving on the curvy road studded with big rock boulders, we came to a turning where our park guide pointed to a rock and said leopard and I immediately noticed the movement on the rock , I slowly rolled the vehicle and stopped it at a comfortable distance from the predator who was sitting impressively on top of a big rock boulder.
We noticed that this leopard was bleeding on the face, just over where the whiskers are. After a minute or two we noticed that there was another leopard which was looking at us from behind the rock, this one looked shy and smaller than the one sitting on the rock which was calm and least bothered by our presence. The smaller leopard was a female and soon enough we realized that they were courting. Seth who was the most experienced amongst us was the first to notice, soon we heard the male leopard, which was on the rock “sawing”. Within a few seconds the female too came up on the rock with her eyes fixed on us, we were excited about what was going to happen and we soon saw what we were hoping to see, we saw these leopards mate which is a rare sight to find in the Indian jungles.
This courtship and mating lasted for around 30 minutes, the female used to come on the rock and then disappear behind it again; this female looked like a very young one and it was probably her first mating. The male leopard was big and looked like a dominant male, the blood on its face could have been due to two reasons either while in the courtship the female had injured him or it was a fight with another male leopard.
What we had witnessed was something spectacular and now I am hoping to see this female with her new cubs.
Himanshu Rathore
(Naturalist Baghvan Pench)
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