Spotting — and more importantly — being able to get decent pictures of a serval in the wild was definitely one of the highlights of my trip to Kenya. It was the second to last night of our two week safari and we were returning to camp after having finally photographed a leopard, completing the big five for this particular trip (leopard, lion, elephant, buffalo and rhino). We were feeling good about the leopard sighting and all of a sudden things got even better when I saw the serval crouched in the grass by the side of the road. She wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding in the short grass, like a child holding fingers in front of her face, thinking that we couldn’t see her. Realizing that we were on to her, she cautiously raised up before taking a few slow steps, then a few quicker ones, and then a full on sprint into the thicker grass. This shot was one of those first few slow steps. I also got nice shots of her leaping away. I was so excited because servals are rarely seen, and being nocturnal, when they are spotted, it’s usually at night. It was, however, getting pretty dark when I took this picture, but I was able to crank up the ISO and avoid using flash thanks to the last remaining light of the day. Servals are medium sized spotted and striped cats, with a smallish head to body ratio, long legs and large, close set ears.