We come to the end of another stunning month. There has hardly been a day without the most magnificent sunrises and sunsets, deep blue skies and starry nights. As the dew evaporates in the early morning it can be seen rising from the waterholes in a magical mist. This is giving wonderful photographic opportunities at Georges Dam, the dam in front of the lodge, providing a special first stop to the day. The guests have had the chance to witness 3 to 5 hippos that have made this dam their residence. Because of the late rains and abundance of water, most of the dams are full and have a few hippos in them. A few strong winds have blown the leaves from the trees and the grass is drying and turning golden.

     This month has been the time of the elephant and an interesting phenomenon happens at certain times of the year when all the herds congregate together. This may only last for a few hours and why this happens nobody knows before they split up into their family groups again and go their own way. However, we were very privileged to see one of these meetings where there were over 200 elephant stretched out over one of our clearings. There were elephants of all descriptions, tiny babies, and big bulls in musth, young bulls play fighting. It was truly one of the most unbeatable sights.

     We have also had amusing viewing of elephants swimming in George’s dam, much to the dismay of the resident hippos! This seems to be a regular past time for elephants at the moment and once again provides very special photographic opportunities.

     The 6 new lions, the Mpogo, are firmly ensconced from a territorial point of view in the North of our property where they are causing havoc between the Ottawa pride and the 2 females remaining from the Sand River Pride. These 2 females have resigned themselves that these are going to be the next dominant males in the area and mating has already taken place. It is probably too soon for the females to have conceived but we are sure that this will happen in the very near future.

     The Ottawa Pride, meanwhile, has been split up and one female was seen mating with some of the Mpogo. We are not sure what has happened to the 6 cubs and the other female. The old Shongleni male has disappeared completely and we presume he has been killed or driven out of the area by these 6 males. The Ximungwe Pride, which is the pride in the South of the property are still battling on and going through fairly hard times from a food point of view. This pride is now only 15 strong but this is still a lot of mouths to feed. The male that has been with them has definitely had a meeting with theMpogo and come out very second best. However, he still controls the southern region but for how long we are unsure. The Mpogo could come down this way anytime and wipe out all the cubs and chase off the male so our lions are in a very precarious situation at the moment.

     The Ximungwe Pride female with the 4 small cubs has been providing us with some fantastic viewing because her cubs are so small. She has broken away from the rest of the Pride and decided to rear these cubs on her own. Once again these cubs are in huge danger if the Mpogo expand their area. The Mpogo not only disrupted the lion population but they have taken to stealing leopard kills regularly and no less than 4 leopard kills have been taken this month.

     Shangwa and her 2 cubs are still providing us with the bulk of our leopard viewing and our observations show us that Shangwa is proving to be an incredibly successful female. On numerous occasions, we have seen her losing her kills to hyena or lion but the very next day she has caught another impala. She constantly has a kill and the cubs are always full and healthy.

     We have witnessed 2 occasions that the Mpogo surprised her, rushed into the area where she had her kill and yet she was able to get away with both her cubs only to take another impala the very next morning. These cubs are also getting very experienced at dealing with lion and hyena, which is extremely important for their future survival. The cubs have started killing small things on their own and one evening while we watched Shangwa on a kill in a tree, her cubs were stalking and killed a banded mongoose not far away. They did not eat the Mongoose as it has a pungent anal scent gland that it utilises when in distress, very similar to that of a skunk.

     Mkwela, we now know, has had her cubs but unfortunately they are outside the reserve. However, we still see her regularly hunting within the reserve and hope that she will bring her cubs into one of her old den sites. We did witness her patrolling her territory and re-visiting each and every one of these sites. The Makubela female has also had bad luck in losing kills to hyena and one evening we saw 6 hyenas converge on her kill and chase her off. The fight between the hyenas over the kill was quite spectacular. It looks like the hyena clans are starting to move back into our traversing area.

     Our rhino viewing continues to be superb and what is amazing is the amount of young bulls that we see in small bachelor groups. This is all unusual behaviour and probably indicates that we have far too many rhino in the reserve.

     The birds are all flocking at this time of year and we get huge congregations of species joining up. This probably serves to ensure that when they do split into their pairs for mating it is unlikely that they would then pair off with their brothers and sisters, as there has been a good mix-up. With the grass getting shorter, we are having regular sightings of genet and white tailed mongoose.

     Last month we gave u a sneak preview of our renovations of the lodge, let us wet your appetite even more........