Luckily, after last month’s incident of a lion eating an aardvark, the aardvark numbers still seem to be survivable, as there was another sighting this month, this time of two together!
The end of May saw three male lions close to our boundary with Shindi, feeding on a hippo. A large kill (unclear whether the lions killed it, or it died of other natural causes), this provided good sightings of lions feeding into early June. A fourth male also joined them after a day.
On the first of June, three cheetah cubs were found near Bat Eared Fox Den, hunkered down under a small bush. The mother could not be seen anywhere, but she had probably gone hunting and left her cubs, instinctively knowing they must not move around, and to hide at any sign of danger. Later the same day, and the next, the three adult cheetah were found in the Tsum Tsum area, hunting – unsuccessfully as far as we could see. In fact, cheetahs were seen almost every day from the middle of the month.
The wild dogs decided to den in roughly the same area as last year, and in the last few days of June, we were able to count a total of 11 puppies. The puppies are only coming out briefly from the den when the alpha female calls them to suckle, but they will become more and more adventurous as time progresses and they learn about their environment. The adult dogs decided to use their environment and ease with humans to their advantage one day, and continued a hunt right through the Kwara camps!
Viewing from the boat was excellent this month, with one boat trip having sightings of sitatunga and two otters – both rare events!
