A Week of A Full Moon in Pictures

Greetings all, and happy Monday to everyone! Also, a happy Memorial Day to our American readers!  With us another week deeper into winter, it was no surprise that the mornings were cooler, the bush was drier, and the impala lilies were starting to bud, adding a splash of colour to the landscape.  Clear blue skies, colourful sunsets, and the presence of a bright moon were the order of the week here at Tanda Tula, and it was another good week for big game viewing.  Naturally, the best of the sightings were on the days when I was not driving! 

Driving in the more open woodlands of the east, hoping to see some signs of cheetah, I began saying that we were due for a sighting as it had been almost two weeks since our last viewing.  I was not wrong, the only problem was that the single remaining dominant male cheetah chose to show himself on the one morning I was not on drive!  From his tracks, he hung around for a couple of days, but despite my best efforts at searching for him, he remained elusive.  It was also not a surprise that the best leopard sighting of the week also took place on my evening off, when the guides got to enjoy the company of N’weti and Pezulu as they moved rapidly through the eastern section, no doubt heading back to a kill.  Sadly, the spotted duo disappeared into a thicket, and they were never found with said kill.  Aside from them, it was actually a week of tough going when it came to finding our leopards.  Their tracks were everywhere, but finding them proved to be a different story.  Even when one was located, they never made it easy for us.  Scotch found Xiwumbana with a large warthog kill, but as it was almost dark and the kill was on the ground, they left him in peace; sadly, that didn’t help, and the hyenas still managed to dispossess him of his kill during the evening.  A couple of kilometres away, a duiker lay hanging in a tree, but the leopard responsible for putting it there was nowhere to be seen in the afternoon.  The next morning, fortunately, Rihati came back to the kill and was pleasingly relaxed whilst up in the tree feeding, so much so that all the guides identified her as Dzindza.  Hearing this, I took my time in heading to the area later in the morning, only to hear that as I was making an approach, the leopard disappeared.  Not wanting to give up, I persisted in checking the area and eventually found her, but she got up and walked off before settling in the shade.  I repositioned, but after a couple of minutes, she got up and moved off again.  I was telling Eric that this was not Dzindza, as she was not nearly as chilled as normal, and that it must be Rihati.  Eric said she was way too relaxed for Rihati, but in the end, photographic evidence proved it was indeed Rihati.  So, despite making us work to find her and get a view before leaving her to her own devices, it was encouraging to see that she is slowly getting more comfortable with the vehicles. 


Whilst the spotted felines were doing their bit to avoid me, their larger tawny cousins played along very well – so much so that we had lions on offer pretty much every drive, and quite often there were multiple sightings to choose from.  A copy-and-paste week for the Vuyela males, as they remained relatively central for most of the week, only heading off property to the north as the week drew to a close.  The River Pride remained quite central after a good feed early in the week, but they were the reason that the males headed north as two lionesses and the cubs (along with three males) were reported to be found on a young giraffe kill many kilometres to the north of our concession at the end of the week.  The pregnant female was seen walking around on her own a couple of times towards the end of the week, but with her belly still full, she has not dropped the cubs yet. 

This week saw the first sighting of the new Sark Breakaway Pride’s cubs – Steven found the mother and her three bundles of cuteness in the western sections yesterday morning on his way back to camp.  The cubs are around 7 or 8 weeks old and will slowly be introduced to the rest of the pride, but they will likely only be brought to large kills in the next month or so.  The Sark Breakaways themselves moved quite a bit this week, and were mostly joined by a single Vuyela male.  Obviously, they were all seen feeding on a wildebeest kill on the morning I was not driving (just in case you thought it was only the spotted cats that avoided me).  I also caught up with the pride when they made their way to our airstrip and spent the evening resting there – I did also see them with a kill that evening, but it was far less exciting…a poor little dwarf mongoose!   The Giraffe Pride were also found feeding on a buffalo kill in the far west in the middle of the week, and portions of the pride were around for the latter part of the week, but I don’t believe any of our guides headed all that way to see them. 


A potentially interesting development was the movement of wild dogs in and out of our concession from the eastern boundary.  With a report of the northern pack having denned in the far north, I brushed off the first signs of the wild dogs as nothing more than a small pack passing through the area.  But when a couple of days later we had tracks for multiple pack members running all around our eastern and central regions before all heading back east, I started to doubt the reports of the northern den.  Chatting to a friend from the north, he said there are no signs of the wild dogs in the north, and he too suspects that they may have denned a little to the east of Tanda Tula.  Whilst the den is not within our concession, it does appear as though it is at least in a position where we should get to see the pack coming to hunt every couple of days (if we are lucky enough to catch them early) – although they evaded us this week, we will be keeping a closer eye out on our eastern side for more signs of them coming to hunt this side. 

The elephant herds were fairly active, but the only buffalos present in the main part of the concession this week were the buffalo bulls. To the west, there were a couple of large breeding herds that appeared to be drawing more and more interest from the lions. Will this be the winter where the lions of central Timabvati once again become buffalo hunters?  Time will tell. 

That is it for now, folks, so enjoy the pics, and hopefully in the next couple of weeks I will get my first view and images of the new lion cubs – so be sure to check back next Monday to see if this will be my lucky week! 

 

Until next time! 

  

Cheers 

Chad