Sandcurves

I like to measure, quantify, count, list, work stuff out.  I like to understand things, down to their basics.  I want to know how my computer works, down to bits and bites.  I want to understand arid systems ecology, down to the finer points, as much as that is possible.  I like to measure just for it's own sake. 

Somehow, certain things get measurements that don't really make sense, but I just keep right on measuring.  One of those, is that I measure some undefined quality of my years as they drift by, by how many leopards I have seen. 

Why, I do not know.  Why leopards, instead of say, lions or elephants or ground woodpeckers?  Well, I have had years with over 100 lion sightings, and when you go somewhere like the Chobe at the river front area (near Kasane, in Botswana) you can't say that you have "an Elephant sighting", practically the whole drive is one long elephant sighting.  I remember a time that Tsavo was like that.  Or the Ewaso Ng'iro River in Samburu/Buffalo Springs. 

So, at times you see to many of those.  And of course, you don't want to go the other way, where things are so localized that your chance of seeing them is limited to where you go. 

No, Leopards are practically everywhere, but in most places you very rarely see them.  Of course, I think anyone who has spent a little time running around the African bush, starts to think that leopards are a little special. 

Come December last year, I still hadn't seen one, and my stint at Sossusvlei Desert Lodge near the end of the year saw me get frantic trying to find one of those animals.  I dipped (to borrow some birding terminology). 

This year I have only done one tour, but I was really lucky and had a really quick glimpse of a leopard. 

In my childhood we basically didn't see leopards.  There were a few glimpses of things that may have been, but I don't have a clear recollection of a nice leopard sighting. 

It has really been in my guiding years that this metric has become 'a thing' with me.  So, for the record, here is, to the best of my recollection<, my score card. 

• 1998 - One, mid day, near Halali
• 1999 - None, not one. Though I did see wild dogs in Bots a few times, so made good like that.
• 2000 - Nothing, though I spent some time tracking them in the Namib, until they would go into the hills.
• 2001 - Two, one at a distance on a dead zebra foal we had seen in the day.  After closing the lodge, a few of us went out with a spotlight and found it.  Three was a hyena, and we could only tell it was a leopard by the way it moved, and comparing the size to the hyena.  Number two was at Phinda Private Game Reserve in South Africa, where I was doing some guide training. 
• 2002 - None
• 2003 - None, but I was in Windhoek for most of that year. 
• 2004 - Our fist amazing sighting on the NamibRand.  It was a training drive (this time me training a bunch of guys hopping to become guides). It was sitting on some granite boulders. 
• 2005 - Two, both on game drives in the Namib Rand.
• 2006 - None, I was a manager in the lodge and did very few game drives. 
• 2007 - I don't remember the exact number, but it was something like 5 sightings. 
• 2008 - It all went nuts and I saw 11 before I left the lodge in June, then one in the Palmwag concession, and then one in Etosha at Olifantsbad waterhole.  In a desert country, that is a really, really good year.  I think very few other guides in Namibia would see that number of truly wild leopards.  Considering all of those sightings but one was in the desert makes it all the more special. 

And then the rest you know, 2009, zero, 2010, one.  I may be doing one short trip in August, and perhaps have a lucky number 2, but at least I can relax, 2010 is fixed up, I've seen my leopard.

I'm feeling lazy today and want to spend time with my boys, I'll put in some of the links to the places later, promise. 

Read on...