THE PUMA, PROTAGONIST AND EMBLEM OF THE ANDES
All wildlife photographers long for special encounters with crazy and unique animals in the world and felines have always, for some mysterious reason, fascinated men. The puma is also known as the “mountain lion” and indeed if you look closely it looks a lot like lionesses and does not show sexual dimorphism. We can recognize a lion from a lioness because of the mane while there are no obvious differences in pumas except for the difference in size. A young one-year-old male can be the same size as an adult female and it can be difficult to understand its sex. They are generally solitary animals although every now and then, as has happened recently in these areas of Chile, you can also meet 3-4 specimens together as also happened to me. The area in question was a vast Patagonian steppe on the edge of the Torres del Paine National Park, in the south of the country and here the concentration of these felines is very high. One of the reasons is certainly the high quantity of guanacos present. The guanaco is a Patagonian herbivore that closely resembles the llama and is the Puma’s main prey.
For that week of wildlife photography expedition I had relied on Cristina, a Chilean girl who worked as a Puma Tracker and was also an international photographer of animals in nature and this aspect had been crucial because in addition to knowing how to find them and create the right situation, she had also been good at understanding where to take me to take the best shots. The first part of the day was dedicated to research and sightings. Binoculars are essential in these situations, you need an instrument with excellent contrasts because looking for these felines in the immense steppes is not easy at all for several reasons: during the day they are almost never active and you need to have excellent lenses when a puma raises its head for a few seconds. Then, good vision is important at dusk when the light is scarce otherwise you risk not seeing anything. The first thing to do however was to observe the behavior of the guanacos because if they are in a group it was very likely that there was some feline nearby ready to ambush. A very important role was played by the lookout guanaco who generally positioned himself on some raised platform keeping an eye on his herd and the surrounding areas and in case there were felines nearby, he would emit an alarm sound.
(left Picture) Herd of guanacos, (middle and right Picture) Guanaco that gave the alarm.
We had heard this sound many times and it was exciting. We were there listening and keeping an eye on everything, even the birds flying in the sky that could indicate a possible carcass and therefore food for the pumas. The first sighting had already occurred on the first day after about 4 hours of scouting. Luckily, I had my 8×32, ultra compact and ultra-light, otherwise I would have done without binoculars these days. Cristina, following a huge group of guanacos, had managed to spot a Puma sunbathing on a cliff. We had approached slowly with the car and in the meantime, we had met another one on the cliff in front. The two felines were about thirty meters away. In these cases, it was essential to understand how to approach them because if the situation presented the right photographic opportunity, you could proceed by approaching, otherwise it was all a matter of waiting. When (as in these cases) we decided to approach, we had to bring all our equipment with us for several reasons: we didn’t know how long the wait would be, so we couldn’t think of going back to the car for any reason, not even to drink some water. After deciding to approach them, the first puma had reached the other one on the other cliff and we had settled on the rocky plain from where it had gone away and we had started taking some photos until a third one had arrived that was definitely not in its territory and in fact one of the two pumas that was already there, had come down to mark the rocks with urine to make the newcomer understand that he was not welcome.
The stranger is not welcome.
For a few minutes there had been an interaction and we had managed to photograph all three of them together then the newcomer, after a few minutes, had decided to leave. Just at that moment Cristina with the binoculars had spotted two more from an impossible distance so much so that I still can’t explain how she had managed to do it. We had therefore decided to leave the first two that certainly would not have left the cliff before late afternoon and therefore would not have guaranteed us different photographic shots from those we had already taken. The ones Cristina had seen with the binoculars were a mother with her cub (already quite big) and they were dozing in the steppe, very close to the dirt road. We had approached with the car and they were there sleeping and every now and then they raised their heads to peek but still totally uninterested in our presence. The cub was just a little shy, but still remained undisturbed.
Mum and the little one.
Suddenly the mother made a quick dash towards a “chimango”, a necrophagous bird of prey. It was precisely this action of hers that had aroused some suspicion until we understood that she was protecting her meal, a guanaco that she had probably hunted the day before and that she had covered with shrubs to prevent the Condors and other predatory birds from spotting her prey from above. What a thing! Suddenly the mother made a quick dash towards a “chimango”, a scavenging bird of prey. It was precisely this action that had aroused some suspicion in us until we understood that she was protecting her meal, a guanaco that she had probably hunted the day before and that she had covered with shrubs to prevent the Condors and other predatory birds from spotting her prey from above. What a thing!
It was 11 in the morning. Already with its first leap we had managed to capture some beautiful moving images because until then we had only had photos of them lying on the ground or on the rocks. The first images of a Puma walking in its natural environment with those yellow ochre and greenish colors in the background were already making me excited and daydreaming. Now we just had to wait and hope that the mother and the little one would go and feed and usually you have to wait until late afternoon. It can also happen that they go to feed when the sun sets and there is no light to take photographs but fortunately this was not our case. Around 6:30 pm the mother began to approach to eat the guanaco she had hunted. She broke the bones with incredible strength and moved the guanaco with her paws depending on what was most comfortable for her. After a few minutes the cub arrived, which was on a higher level than the mother, and it immediately occurred to him to shoot a nice shot (perhaps the most beautiful) which turned out to be sensational because you could see the whole scene with the initially shy cub looking around and also looking at us and slowly (after a few sneezes) he was reaching the mother who was already eating. We had watched their dinner with binoculars for almost an hour and it seemed like we were watching a National Geographic documentary while we were the ones there documenting what happened.
Coming down the rocks.
Back at the hotel I couldn’t believe what I had seen and even though I was dead tired I couldn’t help but download the photos onto my computer and look at them all, from the first to the last. The following days were characterized by many other sightings but nothing comparable to what had happened to us on the first day until the fifth day: we had spotted an adult puma on the same cliff, slightly further away than the ones we had encountered on the first day and it was holed up in a recess to shelter from the wind. It was ten in the morning. That day we weren’t alone, there were other puma trackers, Cristina’s colleagues who while we were keeping an eye on the puma, had found two new carcasses a hundred meters away from each other and both had been hunted by the same feline that was nearby, resting in the bushes. We knew that the puma we were keeping under observation would not move until late afternoon so we decided to risk it and join the other puma trackers, at least to witness what was happening. This time too, a mother with a cub and not far away a large adult male who had been identified: they called him Dark and he was the alpha puma of that area. He was very shy, I had barely managed to look at him with the binoculars.
(left Picture) The three pumas together, (right Picture) Puma watching us.
We had been in that area for about three hours but had not seen anything special so we decided to go back to the cliff and she was still there. It was 4 pm. The day was good, it wasn’t cold and there wasn’t much wind. We were waiting in the car, keeping an eye on the feline who had woken up in the meantime and was observing a herd of guanacos from the top of his rocks. Around 6:30 pm he had stood up on his paws. He was stretching and was starting to walk. We didn’t know where she would go but Cristina’s experience had played a fundamental role: we had positioned ourselves with our cameras right under the rocks where the puma was coming down. I had taken some photos from afar but I didn’t like them, there was too much distance and they didn’t look good so I decided to take some shots. In my life I had never lost control over something, in any situation. I had always had ice-cold blood. But there for a few seconds I felt lost, completely losing control of myself and my camera due to too much adrenaline. I didn’t understand what was happening and I didn’t know which buttons to press to take the photo. It was too late to back away, and while I was taking the shot, I saw her getting a little too close. Really too close. But getting up and walking or even running would have been worse. Adrenaline through the roof, I was a little scared, to be honest. Then she sat down ten meters away from me. She was staring at me. She was resting. She was looking around, moving her ears, looking at me again. And after I regained control and took some of the images (which I still consider among the most beautiful ever taken) I had really understood how important wildlife photography is to me, why I have dedicated my whole life to travel and spent everything I have earned on equipment and travel down to the last cent. I felt more and more that this would not be just a trip, but something much bigger so much so that, jokingly, I wrote that it would be an opera. My dream. All the answers I was looking for were coming.
A puma, ten meters away, staring at me. Click. The click that will last a lifetime.
The shots from the trip that made me lose control of the camera.
The Puma chapter in Chile ended. A week that I will remember for the rest of my life.
Photo’s by Daniele Dell’Osa