Back to the Magic

So here I am... back in the bush... and looking forward to some more amazing sightings. Whilst away for my leave things had gone particularly crazy at the lodge and whilst I tried my hardest to make everyone at work jealous about my mad adventures, they kept replying with the most insane sightings. Brett was lucky enough to see a leopard try to steal a cane rat from two honey badgers and get unceremoniously chased away by the two creatures that together don't even match half the leopards weight. Alister and Cameron saw a pangolin, which on its own is an amazing sighting. But this shy and very elusive character was not alone...a leopard saw this armoured animal waddling along and decided that it should test if this was a meal or not. The pangolin just rolled itself into a little ball with all his armour scutes protecting him and the leopard proceeded to play a little pangolin tennis. Fortunately for the pangolin the survived as the leopard got bored and moved off in search of a better meal.

So my first guests arrived the day I started and it was straight back into the swing of things. We got off to an amazing start when on the way back to the lodge from the airport we bumped in a herd of elephants having a morning drink from the dam. This was a bit of a crazy introduction to the bush for them as I had set the bar nice and high. That evening we headed out and started things nicely with a herd of elephants, some rhinos, hyena, plenty general game and we walked into a journey of giraffe.

The next morning we were heading down south in search of the lions, on the way though we bumped into a beautiful male cheetah that decided to pose for all our photos from the top of a termite mound. We then went off tracking the lions...and it wasn't long before we found the pride of 12 lions doing what they do best...sleeping! As the temperature got hotter they started to move into some thicker bush and we left them there to enjoy the rest of their 21 hours of sleep!

Now that we had seen the lions it was now our mission to find a leopard but that evening we couldn't even find any tracks but we still had an amazing time looking at all the other things that nature has to offer, like the birds, trees and of course just the fact of being out in nature. The highlight of the drive was the huge aggregation of wildebeest, impala and zebra that we saw and then enjoyed a beautiful sunset, moonrise and sundowners.

The following morning the whole world seemed to have the same idea as us... FIND LEOPARD.... and the leopards were at least a little obliging in the fact that they had pretty much danced over the whole property that night leaving tracks everywhere. There were four separate groups all tracking different leopards and it was all about choosing the one that would turn out to be the best sighting. I headed south to get in on the action there cause there were less vehicles which would probably translate into more time with the leopard. On the way down we bumped into a clan of 7 hyenas with the fullest bellies...and they we in a chatty mood! These hyenas we cackling and calling all around the vehicle. Once they moved off we went down and saw the leopard in the south in a tree just looking out for breakfast, when she spotted breakfast she bolted down and started stalking. Unfortunately whatever she was hunting was scared off by the sound of our vehicles and we watched her stalk thin air for about an hour before we headed home.

That wasn't to be the last of our leopard sighting that day as we headed out to a male leopard that afternoon that had stolen a kill from a female. When we got there he was fast asleep at the bottom of the tree and then got up into the tree to feed. We left him there and went to see if we could top off the big 5 with our buffalo but didn't get very far before we found the female leopard who's kill had been stolen that morning. She lay next to the car for a bit, when up the road from behind her a warthog came waddling along. She heard him and started stalking...she was no more than 2 metres from the warthog but she figured he was a little big to tackle and didn't follow through...but that still got everyone's heart pounding at a million miles an hour.

 

All this amazing stuff in 3 days...how could it possibly get better?

The guests had left and the new guests arrived and the first night was great with rhino, buffalo and the leopard feeding of the last remaining bits of his kill. The next morning was overcast and miserable but as we drove out of the lodge we were greeted by 5 adult wild dogs with 5 pups and they had just made a kill and were chasing hyenas all over the place!!! INSANITY!!! It started to drizzle as we left the sighting and went to go see some elephants that had been spotted and while enjoying this sighting a herd of 300 buffalo decided that the elephants were not allowed to be the centre of attention alone...the rain started to come down even more and we were now drenched but completely surrounded by buffalo and elephants.

That afternoon I couldn't resist going to see if we could find the dogs again and we did...this time they were more relaxed around the vehicle and we enjoyed the relaxed nature of the sighting until they came across a bushbuck in some thick bush that they managed to catch and while feeding on it a whole clan of about 10 hyenas including pups came in to steal what they could.... the noise was AMAZING.... hyenas whooping, screeching and laughing, the dogs chirping their high pitched barks and there was complete chaos as they chased each other round...

All this excitement just meant that it was time to make some place for the other vehicles and head out for a nice sundowner! On the way we saw all the hyenas together again and watch one of the mothers sucking her baby!

The new group only had lions left on the 'to see list' and the guys had found tracks that morning but no lions. We went in search of these guys and one of the rangers foumd them sleeping in some thick bush! We took it all in as the lions lay belly up, sleeping, with feet twitching as they dreamt about chasing buffalo around the savanna. We went off to enjoy a sundowner and watched a ridiculous sunset when 3 rhinos walked past and then the male decided to try his luck with the female...he mounted her and attempted madly to consummate the relationship but failed dismally! Male rhinos will have to keep a female that is in oestrus in his territory for about 20 days while she plays hard to get, finally she will allow mounting and it will take the male three days worth of mounting before he actually gets the act right...once inside he will go for about 40 minutes with multiple ejaculations to ensure fertilisation...CRAZY!!!

And eventually we get to this morning, during which we followed a female leopard through the bush till she came to a stop and jumped into a marula tree and posed for some photos...

That concludes my first week back at work (if you can call it that) .... lets hope the next week holds even more surprises!