After the first rains of the season the herbivores started to drop their young and we were lucky enough to witness a wildebeest giving birth. The calf was able to stand in ten minutes and was running around after thirty minutes.
As the month progressed, the numbers of zebra started to build into their hundreds as herds arrived as part of their annual migration to the pans. We saw two stallions have a very intense fight for more than half an hour
Bachelor and breeding herds of elephants continued to visit the camp waterhole in large numbers.
The resident pride of lions was seen fairly regularly and they seemed to be specialising on springbok and zebra. Two of the lions were mating over the course of several days and were often surrounded by game species such as giraffe, zebra and wildebeest who seemed to recognise that the cats had other things on their mind than hunting.
A pack of nine wild dogs, four adults and five puppies, were seen resting one day.
The resident male cheetah was observed actively marking his territory by spraying urine on posts such as termite mounds.
Springboks with their lambs were scattered around the pan. Other general game included gemsbok, red hartebeest, giraffe, common duiker, kudu and impala. Most of the antelopes were in breeding season, with lots of new-born babies.
We enjoyed watching a family of four bat-eared foxes playing together at their den and foraging for harvester termites. They included a young cub and a sub-adult as well as the parents. We also found a black-backed jackal den with two puppies.
At Baines Baobabs several elephant bachelor herds congregated together, numbering about sixty animals in total. They were mud wallowing and play-fighting.
We watched three lanner falcons try their luck at catching knob-billed ducks, forcing one duck to dive underwater to escape. After the rains, storks such as Abdims, yellow-billed and open-billed started to appear and we also saw the beautiful grey crowned cranes and lesser flamingos. Other water birds that arrived as the pans filled included red-billed teal, knob-billed ducks, marsh sandpipers, painted snipes and little grebes. Steppe buzzards, yellow-billed kites and pale chanting goshawks were seen together in a mixed flock hawking termites. We were lucky enough to see red-crested korhaans in a courtship display. A dead ostrich was found along East Road, but strangely none of the scavengers seemed interested in it at all.
(Note: Accompanying picture is from our Kwando Photo Library which consists of all your great photo submissions over the years, it may not be the most up to date, but we felt it was worthy of a feature alongside this month’s Sightings Report!)
