It is busy in the bush:
We have been having great sightings of Twinspot the leopard and her cub recently. On one occasion we were following fresh tracks heading straight into a dry river bed, when we heard some squirrels alarm-calling not too far off and we suspected it may be because of her. As we drove around the “block” in the direction of the tracks, we discovered she had already come out, her tracks on top of our fresh tyre tracks where we had just driven 5 minutes ago! She was close… As we drove around the area we knew it shouldn’t be long before she popped out. Then we found tracks of her and her cub walking together along the road. All of a sudden we had a flash of movement up ahead in a clearing and she showed herself quickly and then lay down. Now we had them! She realised we had spotted her and casually lifted her head and then they continued on their mission as if we were not even there anymore. We suspected she may be leading the cub to a kill she had hidden close by. We had a beautiful sighting of the two until they disappeared into a river bed.
Our dominant male lions have split up for the time being, the one is following a female around who is probably starting her oestrus cycle. He is showing his teeth and exposing his vomeronasal organ in an interesting display called flehmen grimace, this allows him to interpret whether or not the female is ready to copulate. We watched the two love birds for a while and then left them in peace to enjoy their romantic honeymoon together.
The elephants have been hiding from us for the past couple of days, spending a lot of time in the more densily vegetated areas of the reserve, but we managed to get a beautiful sighting of them as they decided to pay us a visit one afternoon. We watched as they graciously ambled through the vegetation, with no intention to hurry. As they pass close by you really begin to respect the sheer size of these magnificent creatures. Then just as quickly as they appeared, they disappeared again back into the bush.
We had an excellent sighting of an African wild cat early in the morning. He probably thought we were going to drive right past him because he just lay 5 metres from the road. When we stopped to view him he realised his cover was blown and dashed back into the bush. At least we all got to see him!
Wonderful sighting one morning of two honey badgers busily foraging. They too decided to quickly dash off into the bush! A very rare sighting indeed.
