Welcome to another edition of A Week in the Bush... In this week’s blog it’s all about the cat dynamics on the reserve at the moment and a quick update on their activities as well as other developments. I hope you enjoy the recap and photos taken by the Social Media Team.

We’ll begin with the leopards of the reserve and this week was very productive with the females. Unfortunately, we haven’t seen Maxabeni in a while, but I’m sure he’s doing just fine and is probably on a kill somewhere that we haven’t found. The females though, are doing just fine without him. We saw his daughter, the Kigelia female, earlier in the week having made a successful kill, but unfortunately it wasn’t long before a small clan of hyenas were on the scene and managed to steal the meal from the small female. It offered us a great sighting though and one our guests will surely not forget.

Warthog Wallow female was also found on a kudu kill quite far out of her usual range and as a result, she seemed very tense to the point that she lifted her head for the slightest movements in the surrounding bush. It is not unusual for females to stray from their usual haunts in search of a meal and the territories often overlap, especially among related females.

Lisbon female also made an appearance later in the week after us not finding her for a short while. She looks as good as ever and treated us to a great sighting as she lazed about in a large Marula Tree. We are often asked the question, “So, do you see leopards most often in trees or on the ground?”, and the reality is that we almost always have them on the ground, but in the summer months the chances of seeing these beautiful cats up trees increases substantially due to the heat, flies and denser vegetation. The guests that enjoyed this sighting should feel very lucky about the encounter. We unfortunately didn’t see her young son with her, but he should be doing well. He is almost a year old now and shouldn’t have too many problems from here on out unless there is a change in dominant males to the southern reaches of the reserve, but that is highly unlikely. We haven’t seen the Mandleve male enough in recent months but he is getting bigger every time we see him and I doubt any leopard in the area could challenge him.

Lastly, we have been treated to fairly regular sightings of the Little Bush female and her cub. Notice here that I say ‘cub’ and not ‘cubs’. Unfortunately, it seems as though there has been a casualty recently with the larger cub, a small male, meeting his end. This is incredibly sad, but also the harsh reality of life as a predatory cat. Mortality in leopard cubs is actually around 60%! Not very good odds at all. There is still the slightest of chances that the young cub just got lost somehow, perhaps running off from danger, and that she will find it, but it is wishful thinking at best. What this means now is that the female can now focus all of her efforts on just looking after the one cub, which should improve its chances of survival. The cub looks like a small female, but we will have to confirm this another time. Rangers and Trackers managed to track them down this week by following up on some very fresh ‘drag marks’, made when the female was dragging the carcass to a certain point she felt safe with. They found her and her cub quite healthy and happy with the fresh meal. She actually successfully made two kills this week, which is great news for the both of them.

Now onto the lions...

There has been much excitement over the last week with regards to the Southern Pride and the Charleston males, especially now that we finally have cubs! It has been a long and arduous journey for the Southern Pride over the last two years or so as we have seen many changes in the male dynamic. When I arrived at Sabi Sabi 3 years ago, the Southern Pride had 11 females at the core of the Pride and today there are only 5! I won’t go into the whole story here, but that is a serious knock to a once very respected and prosperous lion pride. There may also be another casualty among the females as one of them looks to have Sarcoptic Mange, a debilitating disease that is slowly taking its toll on the female.

There is light at the end of the tunnel though and for all intents and purposes, the pride looks great and seem to be settling nicely with the Charleston males at the helm. The larger brother has been mating profusely with Floppy Ear as well as making attempts with some of the other females with success I might add. Whether the Charlestons are the fathers of the new offspring is still very uncertain and most likely they are not, but they may be ok with it. We saw this with the Kruger males when they took over the area and we have seen it again with the Charleston males and Charleston female. It will be interesting to see how this all develops, but there is no way the Southern Pride females could’ve hidden the cubs from the males and the cubs are still doing well so we must assume that everything is ok. All the lions were seen on a large buffalo kill during the course of the week where all members fed on the carcass as well.

All we can hope for is more cubs and for most of them to be females so that the pride can grow again to the size of its former glory days.

I hope you have all enjoyed this week’s update and the thoughts shared above. It is always interesting following the lives of these animals with which we share this amazing place and we are always kept on our toes. I hope that next week there will be mostly good news to share with you and you can stay up-to-date with the goings on via our daily social media posts. Until next time...