Rangers Reports April 2010

Another month has passed in the African bush and as usual we have had some amazing game viewing at Leopard Hills. The big news this month is that we have finally have had some magical sightings of the Hlaba Nkunzi female leopard’s 2 cubs as well as great sightings of the Makubela female’s 2 cubs.

Leopards
A phenomenal month of leopard viewing and as mentioned we have had some wonderful sightings of the Halaba Nkunzi female leopard and her 2 cubs. Furthermore we also have had regular and great sightings of Makubela female leopard’s 2 new cubs in the Eastern part of our traversing area.

My personal highlight was without a doubt seeing four, yes four leopards in a single sighting. On an afternoon safari my guests and I saw for the first time in 6 years the return of the Sendile female leopard. She was one of the 3 female cubs that the legendary Makwela raised to adulthood, for our regular readers she is the sister of the Mambiri female leopard.

She moved in from the East where the core of her territory is and spend one day with us. On my arrival at the sighting I couldn‘t believe my eyes, there she was with her 2 youngsters about a year and a half old and in her company one of her previous youngsters the Zinzele Male who is approximately 4 years old. The most impressive behaviour was seeing the older male grooming his younger siblings.

Lions

Our amazing lion viewing from last month is still continuing and we also had another addition to the Ximungwe Pride, a single cub, which brings the total of lion cubs to four. The 3 older cubs were seen frequently with the females and are growing bigger every day. As in last month 4 of the Mapogo male lion coalition are still roaming our traversing area on a regular basis and the Ottawa Pride with their 3 cubs was also seen regularly.

Cheetah
A quite month in cheetah viewing with only a couple of sightings of the old male passing through our traversing area, the reason for his absence might be due to the large number of lion in the area.

Elephants, Rhino and Buffalo
The big herds of elephants have moved backed into our area and these massive pachyderms were seen on most days. We also had the big herd of buffalo spending a fair amount of time in the South of our traversing area. As per normal the rhino sightings has been constant and as reported in the last couple of months were seen also in the North of our area.

There is a great amount of young bulls in our reserve and most of the sightings in the North were of young bulls moving to “greener pastures” in search of a territory.

Special Sightings
Great sightings of serval cat, a single sighting of a civet and regular sightings of genets were all seen in on drive. We also enjoyed great sightings of Zebra in the south and spend many hours viewing and photographing these iconic animals of Africa.

Until Next Month

Marius Coetzee and the Leopard Hills Guides