Tintswalo Ranger's Blog

It’s been a fairly good and easy going time in the bush the last while. We have been eagerly anticipating one of the big calendar moments in the bush…. The arrival of a whole new generation of young Impala! The mothers still have them safely tucked away but pretty soon they will come and strut their stuff!

Lion

Sizanani and Koppies

They have been in their core territorial area for the last while and have not had any major dramas during this period. For the last while they have been apart and the males have been trying to re-enforce their dominance over their territory. For the girls though it’s been business as usual. One of their favourite areas of operation is to the south of the lodge. It’s a gabbro area with fantastic grazing and plenty of big grazing animals such as Zebra and Buffalo. So the sightings we have had of them were around Panicum road and Manor house pan.

The Sizanani males moved a lot more, and were seen around Zebra pan and Catwalk west, before slipping off the radar for a while.

Sizanani Males

Koppies Females

Leopard

Eric had one nice sighting at Skybeds dam of a female with 2 cubs. According to Eric she was nice and relaxed but unfortunately, as luck would have it, he had no camera on that drive. We will however focus our efforts on that area to try and establish who she is and to work at habituating the cubs.

Wild Dog

There was one sighting of the two dogs on Red road and it seems they have moved north towards Orpen for a while.

The big pack of eighteen dogs was on the Manyeleti once again. The first sighting was at Ndlovu Manzi close to main dam. From there they moved to the Tintswalo airstrip and also moved north to Red road and then to Orpen.

The good thing is that all the pups are still alive and have gotten really big. With the current dismal numbers of Wild Dog in the greater Kruger National Park, this is a fantastic success story!