Saturday 25 April 2009

24th April – Nkateko Living Dangerously!

After yesterdays feast of lions, the guide’s attention turned to looking for some other creatures. I headed down south for the morning, and was rewarded with a good sighting of that large herd of buffalo that have been hanging around the area over the last week. They had slept near Vielmetter camp, and slowly got mobile towards entrance dam. Rockfig had been seen in the area by one of the southern vehicles, but was lost going down into No Name River. I circled the area but had no luck, and as I was about to go past the buffalo herd once again, Herald called to tell me that Nkateko was sitting on a termite mound watching the buffalo. I joined him and watched as she seemed to stalk the buffalo herd, and quite nonchalantly walked into the middle of the herd!
Quite expectedly, the large buffalos took exception to this and ran around chasing her; Nkateko naturally fled, but she ran deeper into the herd and we didn’t manage to find her again, and were a bit concerned that she might end up in some serious trouble. Fortunately she was seen in the afternoon by Andrew and was in good working order, unscathed by her close encounter!

After coffee, I responded to a sighting of Nthombi female leopard on our southern boundary. This always-active leopardess was on one of her usual walk-about’s and moving quite quickly. We followed her for a while, but it was not the easiest terrain to navigate, and considering the good leopard sightings we had had already, we left her.

The general game wasn’t too bad this morning either; impala, steenbok, a male giraffe, a small herd of zebra, kudu, banded mongooses, side-striped jackal, a lone dagga boy drinking at Voël Dam, as well as two bull elephants that arrived to join him for a drink…but surprisingly, no lions!!!






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