Leopard diaries

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

The weather has been cooling down in the north western part of the greater Kruger National Park this week but alas, it has not brought any decent amount of rain. All our browsing animals are doing better as the trees are starting to bloom but our grazers are greatly affected by the lack of rain and the extremely dry bush.

The female leopard Nyeleti and her two cubs have yet again entertained us with their antics. They were first spotted this week with an impala kill close to a large knobthorn tree parallel to the Marakene. We watched the one cub feeding whilst the shy one of the two quickly melted away in the bush. Nyeleti started calling her cub and before long the shy one appeared and playing started all over again. The little family of leopards stayed in the same spot for the next 3 days allowing us excellent viewing before they moved on leaving just the bones of the antelope behind.

During the same drive we came across another two leopards about 200m from Rhino Ring. On closer inspection we identified them as Tyson, the current dominant male from Londolozi and Salayexe, the younger sister of Nyeleti. These two females share both the same parents; Mafufunyane & Saseke. We followed Tyson & Salayexe hoping to catch a glimpse of them mating but Tyson refused Salayexe's advances. Every time she presented herself to him it seemed promising but it always ended in a slap towards her side. We left them as they both headed towards the waterhole.

To round off the week we were graced with the presence of two cheetahs feeding on a waterbuck. As these cats are endangered and we only have a limited number in the park this was a rare and truly spectacular sighting.

The Simbambili team

This last week has provided us with some excellent viewing of not only Leopard and the other members of the Big 5 but also Cheetah. One male cheetah was spotted in the eastern part of our traverse area resting with a full belly. We managed to view him for 2 days whilst he remained in the area and then on the third day he managed to kill an impressively big Waterbuck. Unfortunately for him the territorial male leopard Mafufenane was in the area and watching closely. With very little ceremony the big male Leopard proceeded to chase the cheetah and promptly hoisted the waterbuck carcass into the fork of a nearby Marula tree.

The somewhat reduced Nkahuma pride now numbering 10 was also seen hanging around Three in a Row pan. This is great news as with the Mapogo male lions in the area lion sightings have been fairly scarce. There have been plenty of Elephant all over the reserve and one particularly large tusker has been hanging around the area, he is thought to be one of the new magnificent 7.

The Hyena den has been very active and the two pups thought to be around 6 weeks old have provided hours of entertaining viewing. Johan was also extremely fortunate in spotting a female white Rhino with newly born calf; it is always amazing to see how tiny the new born rhino are and they look like little warthogs.

Towards the end of the week leopard sightings suddenly started to improve dramatically and on most game drives we were viewing around 7 different leopards per drive. The female leopard, Karula very cleverly camped out around a big fruiting Jackalbery and managed to catch two feeding Duiker in as many days. Nyeleti and her two cubs have been seen daily around Serengeti Pan and in the Manyeleti close to Saseke rd. The new male leopard Umvula managed to steal the hind quarters of a Kudu from somewhere, and Shadow joined her father Mafufenyane with the waterbuck he had pilfered from the cheetah.

The Nkuhuma pride also managed to kill an adult female giraffe around Jacobin and was seen there for 4 consecutive days. They finally finished the carcass and unfortunately moved off into the Kruger National Park. With their departure, three of the Mapogo male lions arrived and killed a large buffalo bull no more than 600 metres from the lodge on Pungwe Island. This resulted in ongoing viewing for a number of days together with Hyena and Lion interaction around the carcass.

The Simbambili team

This past week we have experienced extreme temperatures for September. These have often been well above 40 degrees Celsius and this was then followed by two days of slight drizzle that was so slight it could not even be measured in the rain gauge. It did however bring relief from the extreme heat of the previous hot days. Hopefully this is a sign of more rain to come during our summer months as we experienced a relatively dry summer last season.

We were very fortunate with lion sightings at the start of this week. On one game drive we spent the whole morning following the tracks of two male lions who kept eluding us. As we got closer to the hyena den site we decided to take a look at the two pups and were lucky enough to see them put on a marvelous show for us. Having given up on the lions we headed back to the lodge after the Hyena sighting. On our way back we bumped into 3 male lions just near the lodge. These three males are part of the notorious 6 male lions that form the Mapogo coalition. On our afternoon safari we saw the biggest male of the 6 mating with a female from the Styx pride, which meant that we had all 6 in the area although we didn't get to see them all at once.

We suspect that the young male leopard, Matimba took down an Impala only to have it stolen by Mvula, an older male who has recently been regularly seen in our area. He ate what he could and then moved off leaving Matimba enough for a day and a half of feeding. A young female leopard was also seen in a tree with a freshly killed Duiker. The following morning Safari pushed her off the kill and then spent a few days in the tree feeding off it. Two days before that, Safari had another small antelope kill up a tree. We suspect that she had a confrontation with a hyena and won as the kill was badly pulled apart which is not typical of a leopard kill.

On an afternoon drive we found the entire pod of Hippos out of the water at Big Dam taking the opportunity of absorbing the afternoon sun. That morning it had been too cold for them to venture out of the water. We've also been fortunate to have the resident hippo walking up and down the dry riverbed between waterholes in front of the lodge. Two elephant bulls have spent a few days at the entrance of the lodge taking full advantage of any greenery nearby. The Dagga boy buffalo have also been at the waterhole in front of the lodge every day along with big herds of Zebra, Impala, Kudu and Elephants.

With regards the Simbambili Team