Rangers Report February 2011

Sightings - February

Lion

The Monwana pride has been high up in the northern part of Thornybush for most of the month. The females started off with a young buffalo kill and spent the rest of the month preying on impala and warthog.

The male from the north still pursues them, looking for them every few days, and when he does manage to track them down, the lionesses are starting to settle with him and allow him to join them. It was only a few months ago when just at the sound of the male calling, the monwana females would run for the hills.



The male himself is doing well, making enough kills by himself. He spends a lot of time roaring at the male lion on Kapama. On the 22^nd of Feb., the other male moved through to Thornybush and the two males had a fight that has been brewing for some time. It was obvious by the end that our male was the winner.

Farther south in Thornybush, the Black Dam pride seems to prefer wildebeest as their main prey, they made four separate wildebeest kills in the month.

The male is not looking in the best of condition, his hips are showing through and is rather thin in general. This is most likely as a result of his encounter with a buffalo a year ago, where he tried unsuccessfully to take down a mature buffalo and was injured in the process.

The three youngsters are almost a year old now and the young male is just starting to show signs of a mane growing. They are showing good signs of learning to hunt by stalking and chasing each other around.



Leopard

Twin-spot and her cub have been hiding up in the northern part of her territory for most of the month, she may have had an encounter with Nsuku (shy female from central) which would explain her moving to this area. She has spent her month surviving on young warthog and impala.

Twin-spots male cub is now well over a year old and is roughly the same size as his mother. He will only stay with her for a nother two to three months before he is left on his own.



Nsuku has made a number of impala kills in her area, but remains shy of the vehicles, her cub on the other hand is relaxed to the extent that he walked to within ten meters of a vehicle and went to sleep. For this month he is our most viewed leopard.



The resident male in the north, Bambanyathi, is still moving about his territory at speed, he was not recorded with any kills this month which indicates that he only made small kills, warthog and young impala...

According to tracks, it seems that he has been mating with twin-spot, this makes sense because of the age of her cub, being almost ready to leave her, she has come back into heat.

In the south, Calah Mfazi, a female leopard, was attacked by the Black Dam female lion and managed to escape with her life, but sustained an injury to her back, left leg. She was seen last on the 28^th and the reports are good, she seems to be in good condition and moving well with the injury.

The Malewane female is pregnant, she made an impala kill and was lying in a jackal berry tree towards the end of the month and it was clearly visible with the bulging mammary glands.

There is also a report that there is an unidentified female leopard with very young cubs close to waterbuck lodge in the far south of thornybush. She has only been seen once and has subsequently moved her cubs.

Cheetah

The female cheetah in the north with four cubs has been a star performer, she remains in areas where we can find her easily and keep an eye on her. She gave a great show when she chased and killed a steenbok in front of the vehicles that were in the sighting with her.

The cubs are now going on five months and looking good, they have calmed down and are comfortable with the vehicles around them. Our only concerns are that they have attempted to escape onto the Guernsey road, we have for now managed to keep them from doing so.





Hannibal part 2

Below are a series of photographs that was taken of the 2 Verreaux's Eagle Owls that we found one morning. You can clearly see where the owl that won the fight had started to eat its rival. Interestingly a male lion that we were following in the evening came across the carcass after it had been mostly consumed and after a curios sniff grimaced as if in disgust at the smell and carried on his way. The photos were generously given to us by Peik from Norway.