Although June is one of our ‘quieter’ months – with the zebra migration having moved off, and grass starting to become a little sparse – for many of the animals, this is their home, and they don’t move house because of the season. As a result, we have had some excellent predator sightings, and the elephants, as always, are frequenting the waterholes and being as much of a bully as they possibly can.
On the way to the Baines Baobabs, we came across a lovely relaxed young female leopard. She was resting on a piece of dead wood, just before the turn off on the main road.
A cheetah with two sub-adult cubs was seen at the main waterhole, as well as several times along middle road and the baobab loop road. The cubs are growing well, and learning all the necessary skills from their mother that they need to survive in their life.
Two male lions were also seen at various times, and appeared to be looking for a female to mate with.
As the temperature drops, it’s a little easier to see the bat eared foxes, as they spend the time in the open basking in the warm sun. We saw a family of six resting up in this way, with their big ears moving around like radar scanners.
The general game remains good, with lots of giraffe, and the resident zebras, wildebeest and springboks. Also oryx are seen often on the way to Baines Baobabs, and sometimes come in to camp waterhole to drink. And it seems a lone buffalo has decided to take up residence in the Nxai Pan area – he has been seen drinking at the camp waterhole a couple of times this month.
Large numbers of elephants are coming to the camp waterhole. This is wonderful, but slightly problematic. As the waterhole is filled from our water reticulation plant which produces potable water that is safe for animals to drink, it is dependent on people showering.. Now that its our quieter months, less guests, mean less showers, so we are having to pump more water out to the water hole to compensate. Even this is not proving enough, with queues of elephants bullying their way in to the waterhole, and then launching stealth missions during the night through the electric fence to munch on the more protected vegetation that is within the camp. It’s vital that we keep pumping, as otherwise, without enough water for every elephant, we will wake up one morning to find an elephant in the pool, or sucking the water out of the solar geysers like an over-inflated ice-lolly.
