Our week got off to an amazing start with a very uncommon sight of a big bull elephant sleeping on its side! What a lucky sighting!

Giant plated lizards are the second largest lizard we find at Sabi Sabi after the monitor lizard. Shy in nature, but we managed to steal a photo of this one as it peeked out of a termite mound.

Hyena sundowner!

Ronald and his guests were treated to a very special sighting at Selati Camp of Southern Foam Nest Frogs reproducing. The female produces an oviduct secretion which is then whipped up into a foam by the hind legs of the female and the male. This process can last throughout the evening and the female will periodically leave the nest to rehydrate herself in the water below and will return to perhaps a different male that has jostled for a chance to mate. There may be multiple males that are involved in this process trying to get a chance to deposit their sperm in hopes of fertilising the eggs that are released. Once the nest is complete, the outer surface will harden, and the eggs will hatch within the foam and drop into the water below.

An interesting sighting of this Yellow-billed Stork as it fished for its next meal.

We stumbled across two buffalo at the side of the road after looking for them for quite some time.

A very special sighting of this elusive creature. African wild cats are usually active at night, as seen in these pictures, early in the morning, and on rare occasions during the day when the weather is cool. These small cats prey upon a variety of small mammals such as hares, mice and the young of small antelope.

We caught a glimpse of this Southern White-faced Owl close to the lodge as we were returning from safari one evening.

After around 167-175 days these little warthogs would have been born, and although they are relatively new to the world, they walked past us completely at ease.

This Woolly-necked Stork was foraging for food in the early hours of the morning, moving slowly trying to spot his next meal.

During the summer months there are lots of ticks that the animals must deal with. The Oxpeckers are notorious for removing them from the bodies of the animals, but here we found one in the bill of a Lilac-breasted Roller that had plucked it from the ground.

We found one of the N’waswishaka male lions and one of the Kambula lionesses mating, but after they noticed some vultures flying and descending in the distance, they followed them in a haste. The vultures were surrounding a kudu carcass and quickly chased them off and started to feed.

All the signs were there indicating that the Dewane male leopard had recently fed as he lay close to the road with a very full belly!

We had just left the lodge when we noticed tracks of a male leopard, and the alarm calls of squirrels around us were another indication that he might be close by, and he was. We spotted Hanyile just behind us walking along the road, scent marking during the cool hours of the morning.

N’weti male leopard was found with a large impala kill and after some time feeding on the ground, he decided to take his kill up a tree and continued to feed once he had found a good place for it.

Ntsumi female leopard had made a small warthog kill and only a little bit was left when we arrived. Not far from her, N’weti male leopard was still finishing up his impala kill that he had made a few days prior.

We had searched for this male cheetah for quite some time in the morning but had no luck, and so we decided to revisit the area in the afternoon and found him lying under the shade of a tree with a very full stomach.

A female cheetah and her cub were resting (mostly) under the shade of a small tree. The cub was filled with energy and constantly played with its mother’s tail as well as chewing on a small branch.

Until next time...