Leopard diaries

More rain during the week has transformed the bush into a lush green environment with lots of insects, reptiles and even a newborn wildebeest calf being seen .Despite some of the roads being closed due to the rain and inaccessibility, this did not hamper good sightings and we were once again spoiled with exceptional leopard sightings this week.

The female leopard, Nyalethi and her two cubs have been seen regularly in the recently burnt area around Serengeti Pan. The cubs are now close to 8months old and they are getting almost as big as their mother

Shadow, the young female sub-adult made a duiker kill on Central but is unfortunately not yet completely relaxed with vehicles.

Mvula, the young male leopard took his chance one morning in the rain and killed a big female kudu. We found him on the kudu kill only after we spotted some white backed and hooded vultures perched in the trees. He fed on the kudu kill for the best part of two days giving us great viewing. However on the morning of the third day on our return to the site we found that hyenas had stolen the kill and Mvula had unfortunately moved on.

Safari, the old female leopard was seen on Sunday morning with a cut on her left shoulder which she had sustained in a fight with the territorial male Tyson. However she was walking without any difficulty and the injury is not too serious as it doesn't seem to hamper her movement.

Regards The Simbambili Team

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

There has still not been any rain at Simbambili in the last week even though there has been a build up of big rain clouds. Mild temperatures continued during the week with the highs only getting up in to the mid to high thirties at the end of the week.

As always we have been treated to great leopard sightings during the past week.

Nyalethi, the female leopard together with her two young cubs was spotted around Serengeti Pan twice during the week. Safari, the old female has been seen around Big Dam and surrounds hunting and often picked up lazing on top of a termite mound.

Mvula, the young male leopard that has established a territory in the northern part of Simbambili was seen with a Duiker kill up a tree but it wasn't until last night that we followed him going north just after dark. I could see that something had caught his attention and out of the blue he killed a young Duiker. He then carried it for about 50m before starting to pluck the hair out and feeding. He was seen again the next morning hunting impala so the duiker kill was probably stolen by hyena

A previously unknown female leopard moved into the area where she killed a young zebra and dragged it up a tree. She fed off it for about three days but one afternoon she went for a drink at a nearby pan and on her return found that three hyenas had gotten hold of the leftovers and she moved on.

We have been very lucky with two cheetah sightings in one week and regular sightings of lion, buffalo, rhino and elephant have been recorded. All the migrant bird species are also back which gives our safari experience even more variety.

Regards The Simbambili Team

Although the weather has cooled down over the last few days we were only rewarded with about 10mm of rain. Unfortunately this was not enough to break the extremely dry conditions and we can only hope for more rain in the near future.

We received a lovely surprise this week when we found cheetah on several occasions. A male Cheetah was spotted hunting impala but we only saw him on the kill later that evening. We were led to him by a Tawny eagle and some vultures lurking around and the presence of these two raptors often indicates that a fresh kill might be nearby. We had to track on foot before we found the cheetah feeding and we hurried back to the Landrover to put our new guests in the best position to view this endangered cat.

Another lucky sighting was experienced the next morning when we, unexpectedly came across 8 Wild dogs crossing over into one of our neighboring properties Mala Mala. This was only the fourth time this year that a pack of Wild dogs has been spotted and it is always an amazing sighting.

Salaxe, the resident 3 year old female leopard gave birth to two beautiful cubs two weeks ago. She has been seen close to Rhino Pan showing her cubs off to the world. This sighting has however been closed to all vehicles until the cubs are at least 4 weeks old.

Many of the young leopards in the area were seen this week including Mpfula, a young male & Shadow, a young female. Shadow was seen on many occasions over the last week and was spotted sharing an impala with her grandfather, Mafufunyane.

Regards The Simbambili Team