For more than thirty years, Will Burrard-Lucas dreamt of seeing a black panther, the mystical beast he first set eyes upon in The Jungle Book, Rudyard Kipling’s classic adventure. In his new book, The Black Leopard, his own tale of adventure, Burrard-Lucas charts his journey from a five-year-old living in Tanzania, where he first fell in love with leopards; through to a teenage holiday where the first click of a camera shutter changed his life; to becoming a full-time wildlife photographer; to developing a remote-control camera on wheels that captured never-before-seen perspectives of wildlife, gaining him worldwide recognition; and to rumours of a black leopard sighting in Kenya that, finally, was to fulfil his lifelong quest…
With extracts from the black leopard, Will Burrard-Lucas recalls key moments in his journey.
EYES IN THE NIGHT | KENYA, APRIL 2019
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 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 twenty metres. 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
