From Nick Blackstock, Wilsden, West Yorkshire, UK
You published a photo of a black leopard in Kenya, saying it may be the only image of a fully wild black leopard in Africa in a century (23 February, p 28). I was a national service conscript posted to Kenya between 1954 and 1956. We became very familiar with all the local wildlife, sometimes more familiar than comfortable in the circumstances.
Early in 1956, I was one of a dozen squaddies who disturbed a pair of black leopards high in the Aberdare mountains. They made off quickly, but we were sure they were black leopards, not serval cats. That a military patrol could, by sheer accident, come across a pair of these animals seems to suggest sightings weren't too rare.
