West Fleming Jeroen Porteman has been able to photograph a black panther in Kenya. The animal is so rarely seen that it is also called "The Ghost of Africa". Jeroen managed to take a picture at very close range without a camera trap.
Jeroen Porteman is an optician in the West Flemish town of Ieper and travelled to Kenya with a photographer friend from Zonnebeke, Silas Morreeuw. Photos of the black panther had already appeared in a US newspaper. According to the New York Post, it was the first time anyone could photograph a black panther up close without a camera trap. But Jeroen too managed to make photos in this way.
Black panthers are a colour deviation from the common leopard. The rare animal is also called "The Ghost of Africa". It is very rare for such an animal to survive in the wild. The panther that Jeroen and the New York Post were able to photograph is a two-year-old female named Giza.
"Thanks to nature travel agency Starling, we managed to find the animal, but actually she found us," Jeroen says. "With a jeep and thermal cameras, we were in the bush looking for a shadow at night. Suddenly we had to stop because a couple of dik-diks (a kind of small antelope), were blinded by the headlights. We saw that the panther was chasing us. Through our lights, she was able to catch one of the dik-diks. What a clever creature!"
This wasn’t the first challenge Jeroen and Silas faced. Five years ago, they also captured images of "The Ghost of the Himalayas", the snow leopard. To achieve this, the two men had to show considerable patience for days at an altitude of 5,000 metres in freezing temperatures down to -25 degrees Celsius.
For his next dream ghost hunt, Jeroen does not have to go to the other side of the world. "I will now go in search of the ‘Ghost of De Blankaart’ in Diksmuide. That is the bittern. The heron-like bird is almost invisible among the reeds because of its colour. I have heard its "humming" so many times, but never saw the bird. Hopefully one day it will happen."