The scent of danger

Having found this leopard and her subadult cub up a tree with a carcass the previous evening in Savute, Botswana, I returned the following morning. The resident lion pride had picked up the scent of the carcass and were approaching. The leopard realised they were in the area and kept looking out towards their direction to see how close they were. She would only look for a second then turn her head and most of the time her head was in the shade, but I realised if the sun caught her face I could underexpose for a more dramatic portrait. Shortly after this shot, the lions arrived, causing the female leopard and her cub to climb higher in the tree out of their reach. The lions then clumsily climbed the tree and fed on the carcass although the squabbling between them meant that several were forced back down to the ground.