Tintswalo Ranger's Blog: Sightings Update: 15

The Lions have once again proved to be the stars of the show. Last week we were treated to a fair amount of Leopard activity. As it happens in the bush, everything is cyclic and when the largest predator is active, the smaller predators go into hiding.

Lions

Matimba Males

These males are really starting to enjoy all the new real estate they have acquired when they ousted the Sizanani brothers. As a result they have stayed north of Main dam and pushed further and further north. We often find the Koppies and Mbiri females in this area and as it is at the moment, this one territorial takeover has yielded two sets of females.

We had one very impressive sighting of the dark maned males. It showcased their ability to find one another over a fairly long distance.

We found the blue eyed male on Giraffe road and within minutes he started to stare intently in an easterly direction. He gave soft contact calls, still staring. We then heard the distant calls of another male in the east. The behaviour of this male told us that it was another Matimba male calling. He then got up and started making his way east, straight towards the other male. We thought that the other male had to be in the Kruger National Park, probably over four kilometres away. We decided to follow him as he called back and continued east. After about half an hour we saw the other male close to the Kruger National Park boundary. The two stood and looked at each other for a moment and then went straight to each other. They started with the typical Lion head rub greeting and then treated us to a rarely seen display. The serious killer Matimba males started playing. They carried on playing for a few minutes, wrestling and rolling around, reinforcing their social bonds in the process. Eventually they settled down into a bit of grooming, before we left them to it.

Koppies Females

We only had two sightings of these females this week. They pulled down a Zebra at the end of last week and they were still feeding on it into this week. One of the Matimba males joined them at the kill, just before the kill was finished. True to Matimba style, he chased the Koppies girls off the precious kill and finished it by himself. The next morning Mpho found them a short distance from the kill site, digesting and taking it very easy.

Mbiri Females

After carefully scrutinising these females, we realised that we have misidentified them in the past. We originally thought they were part of the scattered Nkuhuma pride, however the C branding on their side, identifies them as part of the dissolved Opren super pride. The two young males are still doing very well and are still very intrigued by the vehicles. We found them on Madache road, not far from the lodge. One of the blonde matimba’s had come up from the south, and was with them.

The young males treated him with the respect he deserves and head rubbed him in a very submissive way. After this, they got up and started stalking the trackers on the front of the vehicles. One of the young males got to within two meters of Alfred, before losing confidence and moving away.