Firstly, I should like to apologise for the lack of a newsletter for January, but this was due to a computer crash, in which we lost all our pictures for the month! We are now back on track, and the newsletters will continue as normal.

We have had an amazing summer, with rain on a regular basis, which has made the growth of grass on our properties phenomenal. Whilst this has made game viewing a little more difficult, and the rangers have had to work a bit harder, we have still had some incredible viewing!

Since our last newsletter where I said that there wasn’t much chance of the Ximungwe cub surviving as a lone cub, having to move with its mother and the pride from an early age, this cub has proved me wrong! Against all odds it has survived, and is doing extremely well. It has also been accepted by the adult males, who allow it to play with them and climb all over them, pulling ears and tails!

Two of the other Ximungwe females have also produced cubs. The one has only shown us a brief visual of a cub in a thicket, while we have only seen the other cub on one occasion. We are afraid that this cub might have died, as the mother was not sure what to do with it, and left it out in the open while she went off to join the rest of the pride. However, she might well have come back and moved it while we were not there.

The four big males that frequent our area have been camped in the south for the past few months, and we have had regular viewing of these magnificent animals!

The Ottawa pride continues to frequent the northern part of our concession, and the four young cubs are doing exceptionally well. What is interesting is that, on a number of occasions, a couple of the sub-adults from the previous litter have been left to babysit the younger cubs, while the rest of the pride go off hunting. I have never seen this happen before.

The leopards have been a little scarce of late by our standards: instead of seeing six or seven leopards on a three-night stay, we are only seeing two or three. The reason is that the Makubela female has two cubs, which we have only seen briefly, as she has kept them well hidden just outside our concession. They are getting to an age now where she will be taking them to kills, as they are over eight weeks old, and will have started eating meat. This will increase our chances of seeing them more regularly.

We are also very pleased to tell you that the Hlabankunzi female also has cubs which she is hiding in some rocks in the central part of our concession. She seems to be a very attentive mother and doesn’t wander far from her den site when hunting, so this also restricts our viewing of her. We believe that the Metsi female has had a litter of cubs, but seems to have lost them already. We found her lactating, but two weeks later the milk supply had dried up, which is a sure sign that she has lost her cubs. She also is moving long distances in very thick areas, making it hard for us to find her!

Mambiri and her cub have been our saviours from a leopard-viewing point of view. The cub is eleven months old now and is spending a lot more time on her own, while Mambiri goes off hunting.

The Lisbon male has made a couple of appearances near Savanna Camp. This male is becoming increasingly relaxed each time we see him. He is a huge male and we only hope that he will extend his territorial boundaries further into our area. From the photo below, you will see that he is very dark and the size of his head and neck is an indication of how powerful and strong this male actually is.

We have been very fortunate for the past three months to have had wild dogs permanently on our concession. This pack of six dogs has been utilising our whole driving area, probably because our hyena populations are lower than normal, and the dogs are finding it a suitable place to be without this competition. This is a highly efficient pack which has been seen killing up to three impala in a morning. We are very privileged to have these rare animals frequenting our concession on such a regular basis. I have known people that have been visiting the game reserves for 20 years without ever seeing a wild dog.

The cheetah has again been making frequent visits into our areas, but it has been difficult to find him owing to the long grass. However, he did extend his stay in our area for over a week on one occasion.

Our rhino viewing has been exceptional, and a few days ago we were delighted to see that the female with the very long horn has moved back into our area. Her calf is now quite big and she has probably conceived again, which usually happens when the calf is approximately a year old. Their gestation is 16 months, so it will be around two and a half years that this current calf will be made independent, and is likely to join up with other sub-adult rhino in the area, whilst the mother goes off to produce her new calf.

The herds of buffalo have been making regular inroads into our open areas, and there is something very impressive about seeing a herd of 500 - 600 buffalo coming down to a waterhole to drink.

What has been evident this year has been the large herd of zebra and wildebeest that have been camped on our open areas. Normally, we don’t have large herds of these herbivores, but this year has been an exception! Herds of up to 30 zebra and 20-30 wildebeest have been viewed on a regular basis. On a couple of occasions we have had up to four different species all grazing together on the same clearing! A few days ago we had buffalo, wildebeest, zebra, impala and rhino in one sighting!

We had a very interesting sighting of a water monitor (leguane) eating an olive toad. This is an unusual sighting, but it goes to show that these lizards have an extremely varied diet, as they will often eat crocodile eggs, birds, fish, snakes, and now we see that toads also make up part of their diet!

Summer also brings in the migratory birds that are very often incredibly beautiful. Some of the most beautiful of these are the bee-eaters, of which two species, the European and the Carmine Bee-eater, have been in abundance this year.

We are going into some of the best game viewing times during the next few months, and we look forward to seeing many of you returning to visit us during this period.

Warm Wishes
Paddy and the Savanna Team