02 November to 09 November 2008

The big news from Simbambili this week is that we finally had some rain. We had 30mm on Tuesday, 20mm on Friday and another 18mm on Saturday night! It has been only five days since the first rains and you can already see the changes in the bush especially in the areas we did block burns where all the new grass and shoots are coming through and will draw all the grazers which will in turn bring even more predators to Simbambili.

We were treated to a very rare sighting of two leopards mating during the week. Who else but the territorial male, Mafufunyane, the dominant male leopard in our area and Ntima, an adult female who mated for three days before they parted. It is indeed a very rare sighting and we were very fortunate.

Mvula, the young male that has taken up residence in the northern part of Simbambili was found on an impala kill early in the week. He took the impala up a Marula tree to escape the unwanted attention of a hyena that hadn't wasted any time and was lurking around biding its time and waiting for any scraps or possibly even the impala to fall from the tree.

The other adult male leopard whose territory overlaps Simbambili Game Lodge property, Tyson, was also seen during the week. He was chasing Shadow, the young female around for a whole morning. The reason for that is he does not want the young female to chase potential mating partners out of his territory seeing that she is still too young to mate.

The Nkahuma lion pride caught a buffalo close to the KNP boundary and they fed off the buffalo for three days which made for interesting viewing.

Next week this time the leopard diaries might look very different with the bush changing after the rains with new fresh growth and new born animals to follow.

Regards The Simbambili Team