20th February – My Shortest Blog Update Ever!

Photo of the Day

Inquisitive baboon

Morning Drive

(Chad and Marka)

1 x elephant bull – Motswari, Camp Clearing

Afternoon Drive

(Chad and Marka)

1 x elephant bull – Motswari, Elephant Pan

1 x elephant bull – Motswari, Northern Access

Daily Synopsis

One of the reasons that I started the blog was to give a truer reflection of our day-to-day sightings, realising that the old monthly sightings reports made it seem like the lions and leopards were always killing something!  Now generally the blog entries are great fun, and I enjoy sharing our great daily sightings with you all, but today I am forced to share a rather quiet day’s worth of viewing to say the least!

The morning once gain started out with promise; the camp vervet monkeys were alarm calling – a sure sign of a leopard, and fresh tracks for Argyle Male leopard heading in that direction showed promise but led to nothing.  After spending most of the first hour around camp looking for him, I gave up and carried on with the drive.  There was very little to speak of; just the usual kudu, waterbuck, impala, some nice baboons, a small python and smaller mammals and birds.  Marka saw some giraffe, but not much else.  Even the radio was deadly quiet – the only news being that of tracks for the Xakubasa White Lions being chased into Klaserie by two male lions!!!  Not good news for wither them or us – we are not sure if there was any contact between the lions, or what the outcome is, but we can certainly speculate that they will, in all likelihood, not being coming back to that area any time soon.

Male waterbuck trying to mate, impala, babaoon and a red-crested korhaan

At breakfast a large elephant bull wandered towards the clearing opposite the camp and spent part of the morning feeding on marula fruits that he was shaking off a large marula tree.

The afternoon also started off with great promise; one of our staff had seen Argyle male leopard walking near the reception not long before the start of game drive, but despite driving the area flat, we were not even able to pick up any sign of where he might have moved off to.

To compound our frustrations, there were no other sightings called in the whole afternoon, besides two separate bull elephants near the lodge.

I had been planning to head deep into the Umbabat, but the inclement weather put pay to that idea, and the rumble of thunder eventually led to a steady drizzle that caused me to close down at the lodge early, having seen warthog, hippo, waterbuck, impala and a herd of zebras.

Marka persisted a bit longer, but without much luck besides giraffe and an elephant near the lodge; he did however find tracks for Argyle Male walking straight through our entrance arch towards reception - just like his daughter (Kuhanya) does quite often!!!

So it was not our best day in the reserve, but we should not forget that it was in fact a Sunday, and the animals also need a day of rest!  So here is to hoping that they are all back and hard at work tomorrow morning!