Lions return with buffalo on the menu
Nxai Pan reopened after its June maintenance to a landscape that had shifted firmly into the dry season. The first lions appeared near the South Gate, where a male and two females were feeding on a buffalo – fitting timing, as increasingly large buffalo herds had begun moving through the area.
The local pride soon moved back towards camp. Two lionesses and a cub visited the permanent waterhole before settling along West Road, and guides later found the full pride near Mini Baobab Loop finishing a giraffe calf. Two dominant males, four adult females and three subadult females rested nearby with full bellies.
For several days the pride stayed close to camp and regularly visited the waterhole after dark to drink.
Buffalo continued to influence the lions’ movements during July. As the herds travelled through areas beyond the game-drive road network, the lions followed them, sometimes taking the cats into places inaccessible to vehicles. Another zebra kill was recorded along the road towards Baines’ Baobabs.
The dry season gathers around the waterholes
July brought a very different Nxai Pan from the green months of summer. Trees shed their leaves, grasses dried and wildlife increasingly concentrated around the permanent waterholes as temperatures rose during the day.
Large bachelor herds of elephants travelled between the waterholes, joined by buffalo, wildebeest, springbok, impala and giraffe. The great zebra herds associated with the rainy season had dispersed, with many animals moving south-west towards the Boteti River.
The journey to Baines’ Baobabs gave guests a good opportunity to see this seasonal movement, with zebra travelling through the area on their way towards the Boteti. The ancient baobabs stood above an increasingly dry landscape of pale pans and open grassland – a very different scene from the rainy season.
Bat-eared foxes were regularly seen in family groups on the plains, using their large ears to locate insects beneath the ground. Black-backed jackals, scrub hares and steenbok were also seen, particularly around the woodland margins and pan edges.
Winter birdlife on the open pans
The change in season also shifted Nxai Pan’s birdlife. With most summer migrants gone, resident species became the focus.
Kori bustards walked across the open plains, while pale chanting goshawks frequently perched in acacia trees scanning the ground for prey. Secretarybirds stalked through the short winter grass searching for insects and small reptiles, and northern black korhaans were often first detected by their calls before being seen displaying over the plains.
Reptile and insect activity slowed considerably in the colder winter conditions, although butterflies and dung beetles could still be encountered around the permanent waterholes.
A winter landscape around Baines’ Baobabs
By July, much of Nxai Pan had taken on its characteristic dry-season appearance. Deciduous trees had lost their leaves and the open pans stretched towards a wide, uninterrupted horizon, broken by umbrella thorns, purple-pod terminalias and the unmistakable forms of the baobabs.
The dry conditions also meant that all the main game-drive roads within the camp’s operating area were accessible, although the longer road towards Baines’ Baobabs remained heavily corrugated in places.
As the day warmed, elephants and other animals increasingly made their way towards the waterholes. This concentration of wildlife around permanent water made the waterholes particularly interesting places to spend time, especially with the local lion pride once again moving through the area.
