In general April is normally a fairly quiet month for Nxai Pan, with not many (human) visitors to the area. It is not the case however, for animal visitors! There is still lots going on here!
The big pride of lions – 14 of them – spent a week in the area to the south of the camp. Every day, they came out to the waterhole for a drink, with full bellies, and then wandered back. For that many lions to be feeding for such a long length of time, they must have been devouring a very large animal probably an elephant. Two subadult lions became separated from the pride, and decided the safest place to relax and call for the rest of the group, was next to room 9. They spent the day there, and eventually moved off, hopefully having relocated their family.
You would think 10 lions would feel secure enough to not be afraid of one male intruder, but the two lionesses with 8 of their subadult youngsters decided a showdown was not in order, and kept running and heading north from the waterhole as the male approached.
The zebra migration that arrived very late this year due to the late rains, moved off quickly in April, as the grass dried up and disappeared. Continually on the move for greener pastures, it’s likely this is going to be a tough year for the zebras…
Replacing the zebras, not quite at migration levels, but certainly providing enough mass to cause havoc, were the elephants. Having spent some of the preceding months in the areas of mopane, where the rain water will have collected into pools, the elephants returned as the water sources dried up. Again focussing on the only two available sources in the park – the camp waterhole and the main waterhole – the elephants decided that this was not sufficient for their needs. Sadly, no one else was involved in this decision, and the camp again had to contend with the pool being siphoned of water overnight.
We also had a good number of cheetah sightings this month, including female, male and sub adults. The female was the most productive, and was seen several times hunting.
