With the wonderful early rains, we are all waiting with anticipation for the impala to start giving birth. This should happen within the next 10 days. This puts a new dimension to game viewing as the predators have a field day with the influx of newborn. It will also be interesting to see how well our new wildebeest do with their calving rate in a brand new area, as they are due soon after the impala. We are very pleasantly surprised to see how well these new wildebeest are doing. Unlike the previous batches that have been brought in, these have stayed on our property. This is probably due to the lower population of lions and the burning which has provided them with a wonderful food source.

     Also with this burn, we have been able to see the family of reedbuck that live around the camp. These are seen almost daily and at our waterhole at night. Rhino have also responded well to the burn and we are seeing huge numbers of rhino, also on Savanna property - sometimes as many as 18 to 20 on a drive.

     The new pride of lion that we mentioned in the last newsletter, that moved onto our property consisting of 2 females and one sub adult female have been with us virtually the whole month. They did leave briefly for a few days and came back with another sub adult male. These lions have been feasting on the wildebeest and have killed at least 3 this month.

     What is interesting is that they seem to have established themselves on Savanna property and the Ximungwe Pride have been conspicuous by their absence during this period, even though they may still be in the area. The Mpogo, our coalition of 6 males, seems to have split up. Two of the males seem to be spending a lot more time off our property in the East, while the four remaining males have ensconced themselves on our traversing area.

     Earlier on this month, we were privileged to have all four roaring at the same time around our cars. This can be a very emotional experience to many of our guests who are lucky enough to witness it and it is not uncommon for guests to shed the odd tear.

     These same four killed a fully grown female giraffe which they fed on for 4 days. It was comical seeing the last male trying to leave the giraffe as he was desperately thirsty and needed to get to the river for a drink, but for a long time he refused to let the vultures come down to clean up the final pickings. He would take a few steps towards the river but would have to rush back to protect the kill. Once he finally capitulated, the vultures came down in their hundreds.

     The Sand River female lions came quite far South this month. Normally their territory is around the Sand River. They killed a wildebeest on the new burnt area. We like to believe that this pride of 2 females and 5 cubs are the only lions that have not been exposed to the TB problem that our lions have within the Southern Kruger Park and Sabi Sands Reserve. What is interesting is that they do not tend to go for buffalo at all which are the main carriers of TB. They prefer the smaller prey species such as impala, wildebeest, bushbuck etc

     The Wallingford male was treed by one of the Mpogo male lions. This male leopard was so nonchalant about the whole affair that he draped his four legs over the branch and went fast asleep. The indignant male lion lay growling at the bottom of the tree but to no avail.

     Eventually the lion roared several times but Wallys” did not even raise his head. On another occasion, the Makubela female killed a big impala and hoisted it into a tree. That evening another of the Mpogo arrived and proceeded to climb the tree and tried to dislodge the impala. Unfortunately for him, it was very firmly lodged in the branch so he was unable to pull it out with his paws and ended up biting onto the carcass and hanging on with his jaws until such time as the body became disconnected from the head and the lion and impala plunged to the ground 14 feet below.

     It was incredible to see the lion with the huge weight of its body swinging freely for at least 30 seconds! Unfortunately, it was too dark to get any good photos of the event!

     Most of the large breeding herds of elephant have moved off East to new feeding grounds since the rains have come. As mentioned before, these elephants know where certain trees are flushing at different times of the year and they will visit these areas during these periods. However one or two herds have stayed in our area and the guests have had the huge thrill of seeing baby elephants, barely a week old!

     We have seen a lot of small groups of teenage bull elephants who like all teenagers are very inquisitive and bold until such time as they are checked and once checked they generally put their tails between their legs and flee. We have had several such encounters with these young elephants. It is obviously up to the ranger to assess the situation and James, one of our trackers was delighted with the close encounter in the photo below!

     This month our soccer team had a match against one of our neighbouring lodges. It was quite a tight game, but in the end, Savanna triumphed with a 1 – 0 victory! Well done! Here Oriel, in blue who is our Head of Housekeeping, shows some nimble footwork that helped us to victory!