Rhinos and Buffalos
The buffalo herd again made a brief appearance in our reserve this month. Nearer to the end of the month though they have been fairly elusive, crossing in at night and vanishing in the early hours of the morning before the game drive vehicles can see them. This is no cause for concern though, as our sightings are more than supplemented by sightings of the groups of bulls that are evenly spread throughout the reserve. Leopard Hills, with our pans close by and the river bed running in front of the lodge, has become somewhat of a magnet for these groups of bulls and are sighted as we either leave from, or return to the lodge from safari.

Rhinos are becoming a lot more visible as the days go by. This is because the vegetation is thinning and the grass height is dropping. We are slowly starting to see the rhinos congregating in groups, concentrating their feeding activities in favourable grazing areas. In the last month, interestingly, I have counted 7 different bulls displaying territorial behaviour. This is a few more than we would normally expect, but a couple of bulls are still fairly small and should be pushed away by the larger territorial bulls in the near future. One of the bulls that is roaming close to camp at the moment sports a fist sized hole behind his eye courtesy of a rival bull’s horn. The injury though is healing quickly, largely thanks to the red billed oxpeckers (birds) that would keep the wound clean by eating the ticks, flies and maggots that may in other cases cause necrosis of the living tissue around the wound.

One or two females also have new born calves and these youngsters are providing superb viewing opportunities. At this age they are still very curious and when we find them you can almost see their little brains working overtime trying to figure out what we are as we sit there in the land rovers taking their pictures. All they are doing is posing for us as they try to figure us out.

Leopards
The best news this month is the long awaited announcement that Makwela has again had cubs. We have seen her recently moving to and from a particular rocky outcrop very frequently. The visible suckle marks on her mammary glands are the dead give away that she is nursing the cubs. Unfortunately we cannot get close to the den site so now we have to start waiting again, until she decides to move her cubs to a more accessible den site.

Shangwa and her two cubs are also still doing very well, these youngsters are now almost 8 months old and growing very quickly thanks to the good constant food source provided to them by their mother. They are spending a lot more time in our part of the reserve now, so they have become some of our most frequently viewed leopards this month. Shangwa is a very successful hunter and thus most of our sightings are of these three leopards feeding on a kill. Another positive aspect here is that we are getting to see fairly regular hyena sightings, always close to the above mentioned leopard’s sightings. Unfortunately these hyena sightings make up the bulk of our hyena’s seen, as the den site I mentioned last month has disappeared. The hyenas vacated the den and we have not been able to relocate it again.

The Hippo Dam, nervous female leopard has been seen this month accompanied by a youngster, also around 8-10 months old. Unfortunately, her second cub was killed by some lionesses in the early part of the month. We hope that her remaining youngster will survive, as when it was viewed, it seemed to be quite a relaxed individual.

The Dam 3 female is slowly starting to win favour with the rangers. This, once nervous leopard has started becoming a very relaxed leopard. She was viewed for extended periods on numerous occasions in May.

This morning a semi relaxed, old female leopard was found in the northern parts of the reserve. Nobody could positively identify this female as she has not been seen by any of the rangers on drive in at least 3 years, but speculation is that this is the Tavangumi female, who is the mother of the Shangwa female Leopard. Tavangumi spends all of her time on reserves east of ours and it would seem that she was in our reserve, possibly looking for a male to mate with. It is not uncommon for female leopards to leave their territories in search of suitable breeding stock males.

The other female leopards that provided us with great sightings this month were: Makubela, Mambirri and the one-eyed (Mangeng) female.

The young nomadic male leopard I mentioned last month was seen again this month. He is a very relaxed individual and will hopefully provide us with many more years of great viewing.

The other males seen were the Wallingford and Othawa males, these two territorial leopards were up to their old antics having a go at each other over territorial boundaries. These two males have an ongoing dispute over territories, and we have been fortunate enough to have witnessed some of the disputes this month. Both males are still strong and healthy and provide us with many sighting opportunities.

Lions
Things on the lion front are fairly quiet at the moment. Not too much is happening in terms of changes to the populations. Sightings are still numerous but there are no deaths or new births to report. The 2 remaining Sand River Pride females still frequent the northern parts of the reserve. Mating behaviour was noted this month with some of the males from the 6 male coalition that we have named the Mapogo Males. Only time will tell whether the females have conceived or not. We will keep you updated on any changes.

The Othawa pride of 2 females and 6 sub-adults did make an appearance again this month. The adult females were also seen to be mating with the males from the Mapogo group. This all but confirms either the death or disappearance of the Nhlanguleni male lion. This male used to be the dominant territorial male in the area where both the Sand River and Othawa prides roam.

The 6 youngsters were not present when the females were mating, but when they were seen they were in good health and in size almost resembled adults. We can only hope that the Mapogo group has not killed them, but that they have accepted them as future pride members. Until we see the 6 youngsters again we will not know for sure.

The Ravenscourt pride was not seen this month. They are spending most/all of their time in reserves east of ours. Unfortunately, the Ximungwe pride is doing the same. The 3 females’ and 12 sub-adults are spending a lot of time following the buffalo herd. This leads them out of our reserve from time to time. At least the territorial male and the female with the four cubs are almost always here to be viewed.

The 6 males are also all very healthy and strong. They were probably the most frequently viewed lions this month. One memorable sighting was of five of these males trying unsuccessfully to chew through the tough armour scales of the very rare pangolin that had coiled itself tightly for protection. After 20 minutes of trying the males gave up and in frustration walked away from the pangolin.

Sightings totals for the Month:
Lion 73
Leopard 47
Elephant 113
Buffalo 33
Rhino 40
Cheetah 3
Pangolin 1
Note: The above sightings totals reflect the number of individual sightings of animals, not populations of animals in the area. E.g. If we see a herd of 12 buffalo this is noted as one sighting. These sightings are then tallied to get the figure reflected above.

Till next month...

Bush greetings
Rudi and the Rangers Team.

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