Challenges are what make life interesting and overcoming them is what makes life meaningful. - Joshua J. Marine

It’s been one of those weeks where you look back and go “WOW”. The amount of changes that happened is just mind blowing, all the trees have full green leaves on them and the grass has just exploded from what looked like a desert a few weeks ago and is now a paradise for the animals and for us.

We can only brag about the amount of leopard sightings we have had in a week and the quality of them is just a massive plus.

For the first time in the three and a half years I have been working here at Sabi Sabi, I eventually got to see the young female leopard known as Ndzilo, who is now roughly about three and a half years old herself. She has been seen moving in from our south eastern corner, but this is about as far she goes into our area. She is a beautiful cat and I hope to spend a lot more time with her in the future.

The Lisbon female has also been busy the last week as she’s been on two duiker kills and managed to finish both of them without any predators trying to steal them from her. Her cub on the other hand is still very shy of the vehicles and tends to go hide in thick bush not too far away. She keeps on calling the cub as if to show him that there is nothing to be scared of, so hopefully with seeing them more now he would relax with us being around.

We have not had the best of luck with Little Bush female and her cub as she killed a duiker and dragged it into a massive Tambotie Tree thicket where they spent a few days until the lions moved through there one night. She is doing really well and the cub can really be proud to have such a great mom to look after her.

As for the Southern Pride and their cubs, things have really been going well as they have been very successful in their hunts. All the females are in excellent condition and even the female that was very skinny a few months ago has picked up so much weight and muscle that you would not even recognize her. The cubs have absolutely just stolen the hearts of all our guests and even the rangers.

They are such a delight to spend time with as when they get very active they tend to start jumping and biting the rest of the pride while they are trying to sleep and get energy for a hunt later on, this time of their lives is very important, because this is where their first hunting skills develop as they stalk mom or dad’s tail, it’s a very good target for them as it moves a lot to try and chase flies off their backs.

For the two Charleston males, things have also been very interesting the last week. There has been some vocalization of other males from the east of our property, but for the Charleston’s it was no problem as we heard them roaring one night and moving fast through the northern part of their territory making sure who ever roared stayed away.

These two males also managed to pull down a big buffalo bull in the beginning of the week without the females knowing. The males have had some amazing interaction with the two cubs and it’s been amazing to see how the confidence has grown in the cubs to start stalking the males and some days even biting their paws.

So far the future of these cubs is looking good and we hope that they make it to independence.

In general, the game viewing has been magnificent. We had loads of elephants coming through the reserve and even a few herds of buffalo making their way around. Snakes have also been seen coming out to find heat as the mornings and afternoons are getting pretty cold now.

I can’t wait for the coming week to see what these amazing animals have in store for us.