The 3rd of October was definitely cat day, with the female cheetah and her two cubs seen along Middle Road heading east, and four different sightings of lions throughout the park. Later in the day, the lions joined up, making the pride of 2 males, five females and ten cubs! A rather large pride!
An interesting time at Tau Pan waterhole this month when four of the young Passage pan lions joined four young lions from the Tau Pan pride. It seemed they wanted to join forces, but this is difficult due to the older males that will try to keep the territory for themselves.
As can happen with the Tau Pan lions, one morning one of them decided to take a stroll through the camp to try and find a shady spot to lie down. All the guests were out on drive, and the camp staff are always aware that this is a possibility, so they move around cautiously. Noticing that one male lion was heading towards the camp, one staff member quickly moved towards the rooms to alert the housekeepers that were cleaning there. On his way back, he found that the lion was now heading towards a room he was approaching – but still some distance away – so he opted to go into the room rather than come head to head with the lion. The lion, then decided that the coolest spot at the moment was to lie in the sand near the side of the wall to the room. A sensible decision on his behalf, but not very helpful to the man who was now stuck in the room. Other staff, realising their colleague’s predicament, came to the back of the room to help him out that way. Much to their amusement, they could hear their friend whispering: “Don’t worry! I am hiding in the toilet so the lion can’t hear me breath!” After a fair bit of encouragement, the staff member was coaxed out of the bathroom, and left the lion to sleep in peace.
As hot as it’s been getting, and without the relief of the rain yet, the animals are sticking to the shade of the trees, where ever possible. The middle of Tau Pan itself is dry and dusty, with very little vegetation at the moment, so that antelope have had to spread out quite a bit to find shade and food. Compared to the abundance of springbok, oryx, wildebeest, giraffe and other members of the menagerie that congregate there after the rains, its looking a little empty, but is just a matter of time. It also makes it easier to spot the normally harder to find animals – leopard, aardwolf made an appearance this month as well.
Over the years, those of you that are familiar with this monthly report will remember that Tau Pan is quite well known for honey badgers. They’ve been recorded regularly breaking in to the kitchen, been spotted helping themselves to the tea and coffee station in the lounge in the late afternoon, and on drive the record for sightings in one morning is six. So it should come as no surprise that, eventually, someone wanted to research them and make a documentary about them. And Tau Pan would naturally be the best place to start. Word got around to the honey badgers, who suddenly turned camera shy, no longer wanted to break into anything, and were quite fine without their afternoon cup of tea, thank you very much. Luckily, when the researcher was about to abandon all hope, and head to somewhere with more reliable subjects (perhaps the donkeys of Maun?) out came the honey badgers – if not quite en masse but with very respectable sightings.
