The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Going on a search for the elusive black leopard
IN 2018 British wildlife photographer Will Burrard-Lucas heard of sightings of a young African black leopard in Kenya. Black leopards had not been scientifically documented in Africa for more than a century so Burrard-Lucas set out to do just that.
An innovator who has developed remotely controlled camera technology (called the BeetleCam), he has written a book about that experience. In this extract from The Black Leopard, he talks about his encounter with the elusive predator.
KENYA, APRIL 2019
The night is black. Clouds blot out the stars and the air is thick with the promise of rain. The monotonous drone of crickets is occasionally punctuated by the eerie alarm call of a rock hyrax.
I turn off my headlamp, plunging everything into total darkness. A move in the wrong direction and I would tumble down a sheer rock face into a jumble of boulders and knotted vegetation. I take a step forward and there is a muffled click and a flash of light as the motion sensor detects me and triggers my camera. I stand still for half a minute, letting the African night envelop me. I feel far removed from the rest of the world.
The camera shutter clicks again as it closes. I turn my light back on and circle round behind the camera trap to review the image. There’s a picture of me on the back of the camera, perfectly lit as if I were standing in a photographer’s studio. Now I just have to wait for the elusive creature to pass this spot, preferably on a clear night when the long exposure will reveal the stars in the sky.
I have a nagging feeling that this ultimate image might never materialize. In the early days of the project, I was capturing photographs of the animal almost every week, but that was during the dry season, when its movements were constrained by the availability of water.
The first rain fell four weeks ago, heralding the onset of the wet season, and since then the animal has vanished. Perhaps it has moved territory for good? At least I am still capturing images of other creatures, such as the beautiful spotty leopard that passed by last night.
I close up the camera housing and turn to leave. As my headlamp flashes across a rock, there is a glimmer of reflected light. I peer into the darkness and two spots glow brightly back at me. Eyes! By the spacing of them, they could belong to a leopard. My pulse races with excitement.
This might be the same spotty leopard that my camera caught yesterday. The animal is probably forty metres (130ft) away; too far for me to make out properly in the dim beam of my headlamp. I creep closer, hoping to get a proper look. I dare not glance down at my feet as I pick my way through the rocks; if I take the light off the cat for a second then it might be able to see me clearly.
The distance has now been halved to perhaps 20 metres (65ft). It doesn’t occur to me to feel any fear. As the animal holds my gaze, the sounds of the night fade, and I revel in this moment of connection with a wild predator.
I can still see only the creature’s eyes, and wish I had a more powerful flashlight with me.
I take one step closer and the cat starts to move. With a shock, I can suddenly make out the entire form of the animal. Its body reflects no light at all; it is just a black shape cut out from the scene in front of me.
The silhouette of the black leopard passes in front of the rocks. Its movement is the unmistakable feline slink of a cat that wishes not to be seen.
The creature melts away into the undergrowth and I am left all alone. I am breathless with elation as I continue to scan the bush, hoping to catch one last glimpse.
Later, as I make my way down from the rocks, I am overwhelmed with a sense of privilege and euphoria. It seems that the many strands of my life have all come together to bring me to this singular moment in time.
I cannot tell you how long that encounter with the black leopard lasted. For a while, in that remote corner of Kenya, it was as if time had stopped.
Taken from The Black Leopard: My Quest to Photograph One of Africa’s Most Elusive Big Cats by Will Burrard-Lucas (Chronicle Books, £26). Visit blackleopardbook.com for more details. Photographs© Will Burrard-Lucas
VYING with Victoria Street and the Grassmarket for the title of Most Instagrammable district, Edinburgh’s picturesque Dean Village nestles in a deep valley to the immediate north-west of the city centre.
It’s hard to believe Princes Street is just a short walk away and even harder to believe that anyone actually lives in the village, but wander the cobbled streets and look up at the turreted houses and fairy tale buildings and you will see the signs of life – pot plants on window ledges, tenement doors ajar and, in the wonderful Well Court, washing drying on the lines criss-crossing the interior courtyard. A near-pristine example of Victorian model housing, it is one of the Dean Village’s undisputed gems.
Elsewhere it’s a higgledy-piggledy place like those others bits of old Edinburgh which can be glimpsed from its 19th century flyovers – think of George IV Bridge with its view of the Cowgate below, or Waterloo Place looking down onto Calton Road – a bird’s eye view of the Dean Village is available from the towering Dean Bridge.
Built by Thomas Telford in 1831, it crosses the valley and carries traffic out of the city on what is now the A90.
“Over this, every afternoon, private carriages go spinning by, and ladies with card-cases pass to and fro about the duties of society. And yet, down below, you may still see, with its mills and foaming weir, the little rural village of Dean.” So wrote Robert Louis Stevenson in Edinburgh: Picturesque Notes, his 1878 hymn to his hometown.
Today the mills are gone – there were
11 at one time – and what industry there is comes from the tourists who busy themselves on the bridge at the foot of Bells Brae, shooting upstream to where the best views are or posing in the red telephone box. If they’re lucky, they might even see one of the herons which hunt along the riverside.
Gone too is the area’s reputation as a place of poverty and grime after a programme of renewal and re-invigoration was begun in the 1960s. Properties are snapped up, unsurprising given that you’re a 10 minute walk from Stockbridge Farmer’s Market in one direction, five minutes from The Scottish National
Gallery of Art’s Modern 2 in the other.
Time may have passed the Dean Village by, but time has changed it too.
What to read and watch
Robert Louis Stevenson is the go-to author, either his Picturesque Notes or perhaps Catriona, his 1893 sequel to Kidnapped.
Location: Strathspey
Grade: Easy low-level walk
Distance: 5 miles/8km
Time: 2-3 hours
SITUATED between Kingussie and Aviemore, Kinrara Estate has had a chequered history in terms of public access. However, a number of years ago a ‘path order’ was taken out by the Cairngorms National Park to enable an extension of the Speyside Way to cross part of the 1100-acre estate, an extension opposed by the estate owners on the basis that it would interfere with nature conservation.
This was the first time the
Land Reform (Scotland) Act
2003 had been used to solve an access dispute and after ministers had approved the path order it was eventually built, providing an undulating route between Aviemore and Kincraig.
Part of that section of the Speyside Way is included in this route, a very pleasant jaunt that takes you through the wooded heart of Kinrara before returning to the starting point via the new footpath.
Starting point for the walk is the small car park adjacent to the entrance to the Dalraddy Holiday Park. We wandered through the underpass below the railway line and turned left to access the tarmac road that we’d follow for the next 5km.
Despite the tarmac underfoot this is a glorious walk through mixed woodland with distant views across the River Spey to the high tops of the Cairngorms.
On our visit it was a dark and gloomy afternoon but it was good to see buzzards spiralling above us and blue tits and even some coal tits in amongst the very impressive old pines.
On our left, wooded slopes rose to the summit called Tor Alvie where a huge obelisk points to the sky – the Duke of Gordon monument, built to commemorate the last Duke of Gordon who died in 1836. Close by is another monument, the Waterloo Cairn, erected by the Marquis of Huntly in 1815
to remember the soldiers of the Gordon Highlanders who died at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
The tarmac road led us past Kinrara House, formerly the summer home of the Duchess of Gordon, whom Wikipedia describes as a ‘Scottish Tory political hostess.’
Along with her husband, the 4th Duke of Gordon and her
son George, Jane, Duchess of Gordon was a founder of the Gordon Highlanders, an infantry regiment that existed until 1994.
It’s said she was a patron of Robert Burns. It’s also claimed that she encouraged young men to join up by offering them the King’s shilling, held between her lips.
The recruits got their recruiting
payment and a kiss into the bargain!
We wandered on past some keepers’ cottages with the hillside on our left now covered in juniper bushes.
Further on we passed a track running off to our left before we dropped down towards some reedy, shallow lochans. There is a lovely view here back over the water to the sharp rise of Tor Alvie.
Soon we were back in pine woods before reaching a cottage beyond which lay our return route to Dalraddy, the troublesome section of the Speyside Way.
This long distance trail runs from Spey Bay on the Moray Firth to Newtonmore and this sections more or less parallels the London to Inverness railway.
It’s an undulating trail, with one or two steep sections and a short section on wooden boards where it crosses marshy ground. It’s straightforward in terms of navigation though – just stick to the path and you won’t go wrong.
We soon reached the road we followed earlier and simply crossed over and followed our
outward route back to Dalraddy car park, the end of a short but very satisfying route that made the most of a glowering January afternoon.
CAMERON MCNEISH
ROUTE PLANNER
Map: OS 1:50,000 Landranger sheet 36 (Grantown & Aviemore); Harveys Map of the Speyside Way
Start/Finish: Car park adjacent to the entrance to Dalraddy Holiday Park (GR: NN857083)
Distance: 5 miles/8km
Time: 2-3 hours
Information: Aviemore TIC, 01479 810930.
Route: Go through underpass below the railway. Almost immediately TL through a gate. Follow the path to a minor road. Follow road for 5km, past Kinrara House and some keepers’ cottages, past lochans and over a stream. When you pass a cottage on your L watch out for Speyside Way signs pointing L. Follow the undulating path, paralleling the railway all the way back to the tarmac road. Cross road and follow path back to the the railway underpass. Go back through the underpass to the car park.