February 12, 2011
Leopard Cub in Serengeti National Park, Tanzania

The seventh day of my safari in Tanzania, and the third in the central Serengeti, included two more encounters on the "Premium Option Tour."

We started the day at the Retima hippo pool where it's possible to photograph the many hippopotamus from close to water level. In addition to the hippos, there were some Nile crocodiles that were good subjects. The hippos weren't as active as usual, but there were more fights that yawns. There was also an extremely small baby hippo that got out of the water and rested on shore for a while. It must have been less than a week old. The first extraordinary encounter was a leopard cub in a good location for photography. Off-road driving is not allowed in the heavily-trafficked area where most leopards in the central Serengeti are found, so good leopard photography is largely dependent on finding the leopard in a tree close to the road. The mother leopard we stopped to photograph was a better-than-average subject and my clients enjoyed photographing her as she rested and we eagerly waited for her descent. Our guide spotted the leopard cub in a large hole in the trunk below the mother (the top of the cub's back was visible), and we waited for it to come out. Sure enough, as the mother climbed down the tree and got near the hole where the cub was located, the cub climbed out. It was the smallest leopard cub I had ever seen and I was thrilled. While it's common to see a leopard on safari, it's not common to see a cub.

The second extraordinary encounter was an African fish eagle that let us approach close enough to get full-frame shots of it. Usually, they're rather skittish and would have flushed before we could have gotten that close.

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