Portrait of a caracal

This is a fairly rare sighting of a caracal, a small mostly nocturnal African cat that is a distant relative of the Canadian lynx. Both cats have distinctive ear tufts. Even animals squint from the sun, but in this case I was lucky to get a shot of the cat in the shade so those beautiful eyes were wide open. I have never seen it, but I've read caracals can leap 12 feet in the air and catch birds in flight! My settings were 1/500, f/5.0, and 1000 ISO. I've learned over the course of many trips to Africa that it's important to use a shutter faster than you think you'll need for sharp pictures. Because of the movement of a heavy lens in your hands, and because of quick movements on the part of animals and birds (even the flick of a head is incredibly fast), the best policy is a shutter speed at least 1/500.