Lesser Bushbaby at the main lodge

 

 

 

Lion

Sizanani and Koppies pride

 

 

 

These lions have a real knack for surviving. They once again had a Matimba incursion into their territory, this time only one Matimba. The healthy Sizanani male still mated with the older Koppies girl around Zebra Pan quarry. They mated for about four days! We then had a bit of a quiet period but Mpho once again soon found these two males at Khoka Moya dam. They simply did what lion do best. Sleep! A few days later they were found on GPS loop, west of Khoka Moya dam on another buffalo kill. It still amazes me how these males are able to bring down an animal the size of a Buffalo, when one male only uses three legs. The gimpy leg male was seen again on Lomfane road, this time not in the company of his brother.

 

 

 

The Koppies girls were only seen once on Madache road.
 

 

 

 

Leopard

 

Main dam female

 

This beautiful leopardess also gave us a big surprise this week. She was found hunting Impala close to Xigamba pan, not far from the lodge. This is quite far from her normal area around S6 cutline and Main dam. She once again showed us how relaxed she is becoming with the vehicles, and was watching the impala from about ten meters away from Eric’s vehicle. We decided to leave her to it as we didn’t want to influence her in any way. We went back the next morning to see if she had succeeded but didn’t find any evidence of a kill. We believe that her cubs are still around and we’re waiting patiently for her to introduce them to us so we can start working on them as well.

 

 

 

Other Leopard

 

There was one other sighting of Leopard around Skybeds dam where a pair of unidentified Leopard was found mating there. I was told that they were fairly relaxed with the vehicles so this is another area we will be keeping an eye on as we continuously try to understand the leopard population in the reserve.
 

 

 

 

Cheetah

 

 

We have always been fairly lucky with Cheetah in this reserve and were once again not disappointed. We found the female Cheetah that we see fairly often on Buffalo plains shortly after she had finished an Impala lamb meal. She posed for the cameras as she always does, still bloody around her mouth. This sighting did however take an interesting turn. A female giraffe spotted her on the plains. She had a calf and wasn’t at all happy with the predator in the area. She started shadowing the Cheetah and made sure that she wasn’t a threat to her young calf.
 

 

 

 

Other views from the Bush

 

The same morning that we saw the Cheetah, Mpho found a large python that had just killed an impala lamb. He was in the process of swallowing it when we arrived. For the sake of not stressing out the snake we had to be happy with the photo’s we got. When snakes feel threatened they’ll regurgitate their kill which we didn’t want to happen. Oh well, you can’t win them all!
 

 

 

Darren Roberts-York

 

 

 

Photo's taken with a Nikon Coolpix P510 and Nikon D600