It’s been a really interesting six weeks with so many sightings that I don’t know where to begin. It’s been a lifelong dream for me to see a leopardess and her cubs grow and form a bond that nothing can break, my dream went off like a rocket as one of my first sightings of a leopard was the Little Bush female on a baby wildebeest kill up a tree! When I arrived at the sighting there wasn’t much left of the kill and the female leopard was found about 80 meters away lying on top of a termite mound in a Tamboti tree thicket. It looked like a perfect spot for her cubs to hide and at that stage I still hadn’t seen these little guys.

We sat there for a while when all of a sudden Little Bush female launched herself off the termite mound and all we could hear were the growls from her and moving branches. While this was happening, I saw two little fur balls running towards my vehicle and up a tree only about 20 meters from me. That was the closest safe haven for them to try and get away from whatever mom was beating up in the background. On the return of mom, the cubs made their way down the tree and greeted mom as if they hadn’t seen her for days.

At this stage I could still not believe my eyes! Eventually both cubs were with mom and they started walking towards a riverbed which meant they had to cross over an open area, and this made for a perfect opportunity to get some great photos. I must say I missed a few “good ones” as everyone calls it because I put my camera down a few times just to take in the moment.

After this sighting I made the mistake of saying “that was a once in a lifetime sighting”! As soon as Little Bush female had it, she surprised me yet again - twice, one sighting beating the other! I could not believe what my eyes were seeing over a period of five weeks, I will let the next few photos prove themselves.

The last sighting I had of her before going on leave was of her on a bushbuck kill. I made my way into the sighting when all of a sudden there was a massive ball of dust in front of us, I rushed over and found Little Bush female busy suffocating a female impala. After she made the kill she made her way to the old kill site and called the cubs over to the new fresh kill. After feeding for a while she then took the two cubs for a drink at a nearby waterhole.

With all that behind us, I also had an amazing sighting of a female leopard that we don’t get to see that often, the White Dam female. She came walking out of a thicket one afternoon with a warthog piglet hanging from her jaws. She stopped once to feed off it and then continued her journey back towards an area we suspected her cub is hiding.

The one afternoon while sitting watching a pride of lions doing what they do best, “sleeping”, we found a Black Mamba that just killed a scrub hair about 30 meters away from the sleeping lions and was busy swallowing it.

So talking about lions, they’ve been abundant in our area for a while now! It’s really been amazing to spend time with the two Charleston males as they haven’t been spending a lot of time together after the pride take over. The two beautiful males are just growing bigger every day and it sounds like the day I left they found the one male mating with the oldest female in the pride, this meaning in the next four months we might be seeing some of their first offspring.

We have had some good sightings of all the other species around, all the way from birds to buffalo and even got some hippo being more productive than what we are used to.

Even though rain has been very absent the last few months, we get to have some amazing lighting storms which lit up the African bush like I have never seen before. I was fortunate enough to get a few good photos and let’s hope next time there will be more of some rivers flowing.