Leopard in Storm!

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Severe cyclonic storm 'Nilam' hit Tamil Nadu coast last week, making its impact on entire south India. Even the Rajiv Gandhi National Park, Kabini wasn't spared while I along with few friends made a trip to Kabini. The rain Gods had no mercy whatsoever, it was my first game drive after almost 3 months. As we drove into the forest it poured heavily and the forest as expected was flooded, but it was at its best.
After almost 1:45 mins game drive, with no sightings of any animals except for few spotted deers and a brown fish owl (BFO). We were heading back to the exit gate and suddenly our driver Muddu whispered leopard leopard leopard...
Our immediate reaction was to look into the bushes, then Muddu pointed out towards a teak tree on our left. It took all of us couple of minutes to spot this cat, hats off to Muddu for his spotting skills while in motion.
A young male leopard was perched nicely on a branch and had protection from the rains with help of big teak tree leaves. The time was 5:45pm light was extremely low, but didn't have any choice than to make few high ISO images. This was the perfect start for our trip. More exciting images and sightings to follow, stay tuned...

Camera - Canon 1D Mark IV, Canon f4 500mm lens
EXIF - ISO 3200 Av 4 Tv 1/40sec, EC - 0.3, Subject distance 45M, Bean bag support, Small crop

[Roopak Gangadharan]

Nice pose and eye contact praveen, the hanging tail looks nice.
TFS
Roopak

[Sucheth Lingachar]

Beautiful... and agree with Roopak... Hanging tail is looking good....

[Saktipada Panigrahi]

Wonderful image. Superb composition. This leopard has an exceptionally long tail, it has got no relationship to size.
Corbett wrote that leopard does not like rains. Your leopard has taken shelter under broad leaves of the teak tree.Yesterday I was reading Corbett, today I am reading Praveen.
Thanks for sharing.SaktiWild

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Nice to see a leopard image. The shutter speed was pretty low.

I remember Corbett mentioning leopard crossing a stream by jumping over rocks "hop-skip and jump" and the tiger mostly getting into water and crossing. Once he saw the tiger managing to jump over the rocks in the hop-skip-jump manner and not succeeding and then succeeding at a later date.

[Mrudul Godbole]

Lovely sighting. Nice pose and good eye contact. The colour of the leopard looks a bit different, did you change the white balance? Thanks for sharing.

[Praveen Siddannavar]

Thank you all for the wonderful comments

Mrudul the color of the leopard is the same what you see in the image, it is sort of golden. We were told this is a new young male in the territory.

[Murugan Anantharaman]

Lovely image Praveen. The leopard looks relaxed and has taken a nice place to rest. The wet leaves add to the image. Thanks for sharing.