Naturally, our most common sightings at the moment are the elephants. There are few places in the world that can be slightly exasperated at the numbers of elephants that are in their back yard, but Nxai may be in the running. Although they may be giving the camp managers grey hairs from their attempts to drink from their own personal choice of water supply, rather than that which has been provided for them in plentiful amounts, there is always an air of magic around them. As they quietly move across the front of the camp there is nothing but awe from all of us standing by to watch them. Yes, the numbers in our area have increased, yes, it’s a constant challenge to ensure they have enough water to drink and to discourage them from breaking anything that we really need to run our camps, but we never tire of their presence.
Good lion sightings this month, but the large pride from previous months has split up – probably due to the males reacting to the young males in the pride. However, we regularly saw two females and two males – though not always together at the same time. They seemed to spend a large portion of their time hanging out near to the waterholes – alternating between the main park waterhole, and the camp one. Not only is it a good place for a nice coolish drink, but it’s a great place to sit down and wait for your meal to walk by…
Two of the lions – the two males – seemed to take a particular liking to the area near to the camp. They were resting in the area near to room 1, and were naturally, a little shy of people. The general day to day noise of the camp and people moving around made them move off to a quieter area, and the next day they were found on Baobab Loop.
A lovely new sighting after our previous cheetah cubs have all grown up – a female has three new little cubs! The family were found near the southern camping grounds, resting under the shade of a tree. They seemed fairly relaxed to have us watching, so we hope that we will continue to have regular sightings of them, and be able to watch them grow up.
We continue to have the unusual sightings of a small group of male buffalos coming to drink at the waterhole, and bizarrely, resting up for the night in the back of house areas of the camp. Exactly what they are eating remains to be seen, as there is very little in the way of grass around.
