27th April - 03rd May

Leopard diaries from 27^th April - 03^rd May

The number of elephants in the area appeared to be increasing every day this week. Despite this, the vegetation is still looking good after recent unseasonal rain. We had numerous sightings during the week of various big herds of elephants that came into the Sabi Sand from the Kruger National Park.

Leopard sightings have been excellent. On one morning game drive one of our experienced trackers, Lucky spotted very fresh female leopard tracks. We immediately jumped off the vehicle and followed the tracks that left the road and went into the bush. This led us to an old den site of hyenas. This was empty but we were able to pick up more tracks and followed an animal path into the bush where we discovered an impala kill under a large fallen tree. Unfortunately, as the leopard was not present this meant that she had seen us and run off. Lucky stayed behind some distance away from the kill whilst I went to fetch the vehicle.  We returned to find the female leopard Salayexe resting opposite the kill under a marula tree. We viewed her for a while and then saw her two cubs heading through the bush towards her.

The sighting was amazing, with lots of play between mother and cubs. We continued to watch them for over half an hour in the hope that they would feed from the impala kill, but they didn't and instead went to rest under a thick bush.

Later after leaving the leopards, we had a wonderful sighting of hippo at Big Dam during our morning coffee break.

On another occasion we saw the female leopard Nyeleti's young cubs on the dam wall at Serengeti. They were very skittish as their mother was not around but we soon heard her calling to them. We drove around and saw them meet up, they played for a while and then moved off towards the boundary where we lost visual of them.

Two male lions (Mapogo) were spotted at Chitwa-Chitwa airstrip resting. There was not a lot of activity from them but it was nevertheless good to see them. The Styx Pride were also seen during the week. We enjoyed a good sighting of them and watched as they hunted and then attempted to make a kill but they were unsuccessful.

Wild dogs were again spotted on the property during the week. It was a pack of five dogs and we watched as they killed a duiker. They then wolfed the kill down in five minutes flat and then ran off across our boundary where we were unable to follow.

Until next time

Simbambili team
Laz.