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A Week in the Bush Vol. 106

on Jun 09, 2016

This must be my favourite time of the year, especially the night sky, it is a breathtakingly beautiful image as you put all your lights off and allow your eyes to adjust to the darkness around you.

01Mike Palmer Stars 010616

This week has been a jam-packed week of lion sightings with the Southern Pride moving all over the reserve and splitting up into different directions.

02Mike Palmer Lions 060616 2

This was a great thing to happen as the pride has been giving us some amazing sightings, roaring back and forth continuously to try and find each other. They are all in really good condition as hunting has been very successful the last week. We have also been seeing Mandleve (Floppy Ear) moving around alone and going into some really thick drainage line which could indicate that she’s looking for a den site.

03Mike L Sp And Baby

The two Charleston males seem to be doing very well as they have been travelling through their whole territory every second day, roaring continuously to make sure other males know this is their territory.

It took these two males a few days to find the females again and when they eventually found them, the two males started fighting over the younger female and she eventually got left behind with the two males as they sorted each other out to see who is going to mate with her.

During this past week, the leopards have proved difficult to find as they have been spending a lot of time in thick bush around riverbed areas. We were fortunate to spend some time with the Hlarulini female as she made her appearance the other day, calling frequently and scent marking on almost every second tree! She is such a beautiful leopard and we hope to see more of her in the future.

Little Bush and her cub seem to be doing very well as always - she is such a good mom and always performs when it comes to looking after her cub. She managed to take down a duiker the one evening and got to finish the whole kill despite one hyena trying its luck! Little Bush was all over the hyena, leaving it walking away with a few extra scratches.

In general, game viewing has been great and we have been spoilt with amazing sightings. I will let the pictures tell the story...

A troop of baboons enjoyed a drink as the one youngster stares at them like they are crazy!

13Franscois Rosslee Baboon 1

A hippo bull makes his way back to water after a long night of grazing.

14Franscois Rosslee Hippo 1

A young elephant bull chased these buffalo away from the water as he wanted it all for himself.

15Franscois Rosslee Buffeli 1

A herd of kudu nervously approached a waterhole and enjoyed a drink in the late afternoon.

16Franscois Rosslee Kudu 1
  • Blog by Franscois Rosslee (Bush Lodge Ranger)
  • Photos by Franscois Rosslee, Mike Palmer, Kyle Strautmann, Tayla McCurdy and Mike Laubscher
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