Young Cheetah Sets Chase

1st December 2011

With another incredible sunrise greeting the early rises, I find myself thinking about the year up to now. The sightings at Nambiti have been on the top end of spectacular and this week is by no means the exception.
 
We had a sighting on the western plains area of the reserve and right in front of the vehicle. It was the youngest of our cheetah right in front of the game viewer giving chase to a Duiker through the grass. His tail spinning from one side to the other as he accelerated closer, the young male moving fast to win his prize. Unfortunately for the Cheetah and fortunately for the Duiker a Serval was also hunting the same area. Distracted and very curious the young Cheetah stopped taking the chance to focus his intentions on the Serval.  The Duiker now nowhere to be seen obviously fled the scene. Needless to say the Serval now felt highly threatened and hissed and stomped with his from legs making it clear to the Cheetah he was not in the mood for anything. After about four minutes the Cheetah lost interest thus giving the Serval the chance to make haste.

This was a very rare and interesting sighting for all of us and a first in my book anyway.  A special moment in time here for the Springbok guests and guides; one that will be remembered for a long time to come.

So long - till we meet on the plains of Nambiti …
The Springbok Lodge Rangers ~ Lee, David and Ruan

New Elephant Bull's Released

RANGER DIARIES - 22 November 2011
With our beloved Nambiti Conservancy alive as ever and pulsing from corner to corner after the recent block burns and occasional flickering shower, we see it lush and green wearing its best jacket of the year.

Game from all sides have come to the party and put on some really spectacular shows for us rangers here in the south, keeping us and the guests enthralled in the wonders the bush has to offer.

Yesterday morning (21 November 2011) at 05h00 the first two elephant bulls; of the four to arrive from Makalali near Hoedspruit, in the Limpopo Province; were released onto the property here on the hill by Springbok Lodge. After a not so troublesome journey (luckily for them) they cruised around the bush eventually moving right past the front of our lodge and out of sight through the bush around our tents. I think we are all in hopes of seeing them integrate calmly with the rest of the Ellies here. No doubt that the bulls will soon come into contact with the older resident bull. I for one hope I experience it, from an ecological and personal point of view.

Lion sightings have been great with the three cubs spending much of their time in the south over the last few days. One of their kills entertaining groups for close to three days.

General game are closer to our lodge now thanks to the fresh grass in our surrounds, providing early morning and afternoon sightings, which are often spoken about during the days drive. In fact in a rare case we had three jackal chasing a sub adult impala ram past tent one the other morning, only to find a young ram impala being eaten by three jackal a few minutes later…no doubt the same three we saw.

All in all it looks like its going to be a great end of year as usual, with the amazing and spectacular diversity here.

Till we meet on the plains of Nambiti …

RANGER: Lee Groenewald

Cats galore.

Hello past and future guests of Springbok lodge.

This is what the last week has given us, we had cheetah in our camp for a whole morning and after some great pictures headed out to find a mother Serval and her cub, this was the highlight for most of our guests as many of them had never seen Serval in the wild.

Regular Lion sightings have kept our guests in awe of these amazing animals and this morning we were treated to the whole pride including the 13 month old cubs who stumbled upon a careless Warthog, who soon became breakfast. Overall the game drives have been exiting and action filled, lets keep our fingers crossed that it continues.

Until we next meet on the plains of Nambiti.

The rangers.  

Winters Here !

Hello everyone

As winter closes in and the first frosts appear in the mornings you would expect the animals to be harder to find, however that’s not the case. The grass gets shorter in winter this makes spotting the animals a bit easier than in summer and provides great photographic opportunities. The Elephants have been spending a lot of time close to the lodge over the past week and there are a number of new additions to the herd.

There have been good sightings of lions including the cubs that were born last year may, and our grumpy buffalo are regularly seen as well as the ever inquisitive cheetahs that have been making kills close to the lodge. Other interesting and rare sightings include aardwolf, serval, porcupine and secretary bird.

Warm regards until we next meet on the plains of Nambiti.

The Rangers

Lions cheetahs and Buffalo

We headed out for our morning game drive on the 24^th. None of us expecting the action packed sightings awaiting us…

We left the Lodge and headed up to Bass Dam, as I’d heard our young “lone” Lioness

(aka Trashcan) had made a kill there the night before. On the way there I caught a brief glimpse of a Lioness walking along the D46 fence line. I headed towards the fence line trying to relocate on her, but she gave us the slip in the long grass. Just as we arrived at the Woodlands Gate we bumped into a 2^nd Lioness.  This was one of the older Lioness’s, and she was clearly NOT a happy cat. She was displaying scent marking and flicking her tail and after passing us she headed off on a mission in the direction of Trashcan.

One of the other Rangers followed up on the Lioness and the older Lioness was clearly chasing Trashcan.

We headed back towards Bass Dam where we saw the herd of Buffalo happily grazing. It wasn’t long before the 2 lioness’s passed them along the fence-line. The Buffalo had calves with them and will not tolerate any predators close by and so they ganged up and took off after the 2 Lioness chasing them off for 100m or so.

We then heard that there were some Cheetah close by at “Little Serengeti” so we drove up northward to try locate them.  As we got to the fence line, we saw Trashcan along the fence coming toward us. We stopped to watch her next move.

She popped out of the tall grass and turned towards us and started heading back south. towards the dam. We could see she had been in a fight - there was a bleeding wound on her bum. As “Trashcan” passed us the 3 Cheetah boys saw her and took off like a bolt of lightning.

Seconds later the older Lioness popped out of the grass.  She was absolutely furious. She didn’t know who to chase. The Cheetahs or Trashcan…??

She paced up and down a few times and then started roaring then turned to the north and headed off.

Clearly Trashcan and the older female had had a fight over the Zebra carcass from the night before and although they both looked well fed they were both exhausted from the fight.

The rest of the drive was pale in comparison to the first action packed hour and half of lions cheetahs and Buffalo. And our drive ended the drive with a lovely drinks stop at Homestead dam.

Lion kill

On Thursday the 17^th Feb. Ranger Elize headed out on an afternoon game drive with 2 guests. We were heading off to follow up on a lion male and female that had been spotted up in the middle of the reserve. Being such a hot day I decided to pass by a couple waterholes on the way to see if we could find some game having an afternoon drink. As we approached Terrapin Bay, My guests spotted something in the water. Upon closer inspection we saw it was a Waterbuck Bull standing chest deep in the water, trying to cool off. He was quite relaxed, standing there ruminating (re-chewing his cud). Standing in the water like that was also probably an attempt to rid himself of ticks and other external parasites by drowning them.

After about 5 minutes or so he slowly strolled off to the bank, where he started grazing

We then headed off to the middle of the reserve where the lion were spotted. Another lodge had planned a wedding ceremony that afternoon, and the lions just so happened to have made a kill 300 meters from the ceremony venue!!

We Found the Male lion first, lazily sleeping in the long grass after a good Wildebeest lunch. From there we could hear chomping and gnawing sounds, so we drove in closer to find the lioness still feeding. Although she was partially obscured by the long grass, It was still really a fantastic sighting.

Elize

Lioness sighting

On Tuesday the 15^th Rangers Lee and Elize headed out on the afternoon drive. We were both looking for a Lioness that had been spotted on her own in the plains that morning.

I found a 2 Track off the plains and spent a good 20 minutes looking for her amongst the rocks, to no avail. She was simply just too well camouflaged. Lee followed in to help look.

Not long after Lee Radioed me to say that she had just stood up from under a tree and was mobile in the area. I returned to the sighting where we were rewarded with a real treat.

The lioness walked in between our two Game viewers, as she was passing my vehicle, she started roaring. She appeared to be trying to contact the rest of her pride. It was an amazing sighting, with our guests bubbling with excitement all through the drive.

Elize

Babies everywhere

Ranger Elize (Springbok lodge) and 4 guests headed out on the morning drive, looking for Rhino. This drive sure turned out to tug on the heart strings of anyone with a maternal soft spot.

We first came across a Kudu cow with a young calf busy suckling milk. The Kudu patiently kept a sharp eye out for any predators while letting her calf suckle. (Happily wagging its tail.) 

Half way through the drive we came across a fantastic crash of 5 Rhino in total.

3x Adults, 1x sub adult and a tiny calf. Being only a couple months old its horn has just started developing, and is just visible as a tiny bump on its snout. The calf is one of 2 new Rhino calves born in 2010. And we have heard via the bushveld telegraph that the first 2011 rhino calf has been born in the last week.!!

Having such a young calf with them, the mother was a little weary of our presence, so we left them to graze in peace.

Heading off for our morning coffee break we saw a couple of tiny Gemsbok calves (oryx). At the sight of these two little fluffy Cherubs all my guests reacted in unison with the traditional “Aaawww sweeet”  

Lion King on wake up call duty?

On our evening drive yesterday we spotted a pride of 6 Lion opposite Tent 13 at Springbok Lodge .  We located them at around 18h30 approximately 400 metres from the tent, soaking up the last of the late afternoon sun shine. 

Later on, whilst the guests were enjoying dinner, we drove around trying to see if they were in camp but we did not find them.   We heard the alarm calls of some Kudu which indicated to us that they were still within the main Lodge area.

At around 3.30am this morning, I was awoken by the male calling close to Tent 13.  It was not advertising its territory – it was a distress call – my interpretation is that it was indicating that it had lost some of its pride members.  He kept calling till 05h30.  The guests were excited but also had now been awake for 2 hours (esp. the 3 guests in Tent 13 !!)  It was truly an African experience to “write home about” !!  There is no other substitute for a wake up call when you are out in the bush like the roar of the Lion. 

Whilst on our morning drive we located the pride around 09h30 still close to the lodge.  This afternoons drive will reveal more !!

Sam

Lion cubs try to hunt for the family

On  our  evening  drive  on  the  4th  of  February  we  came  across  a  pride  of  lions  2 females  1  male  and  3  cubs  perched  on  a kopje  close  to  blue  crane  road  .They  were  looking  at  different  directions  from  where we  parked  our  vehicle 

Soon  2  cubs  started  coming  of   the  kopje, and appeared to be stalking 2 warthogs  in  the distance , they  used all  the  cover  they  had  to  get  about  40 meters  from  where  the  prey  was , lack  of  experience  played  a  major  role  to  the  escape  of  the  warthogs 

They  rushed  their  attempt  as  the  warthog  noticed  them  and  ran  away .it  took  them  all  most  30munites  before they  rejoined  the  pride  .Both  parents  never  made  any  attempt  to  try  and  hunt  which  showed  that  they  had  eaten  before 

Sam  Nkomo

Cheetah Feeds on Buffalo Dung

03 \02\11

We  had  5  guests  on  our  evening  drive  with  Nelius, all  the  guest  had  been  on  drives  before  and  what  they  had  not  seen  was  the  cheetah  and  seeing  cheetah   was  going  to  make  their  dream  come  true  in  Africa 

The  afternoon  was  really  active  with  a  lot  of  general  game  in  the  plains  as  it  was  really  sunny  and  all  the  animals  where  coming  to  the  open  after  spending  few  days  in  the  hiding  after  a  lot  of  rains .First  to  see  was  the  young  jackal  looking  for  insects  trotting  on  the  road  ,close  to  the  Homestead  there  was  4 Buffalo bulls enjoying  the  green  grass & we  were  also  able  to  see  the  breeding  herd  of  elephants  and a journey  of  giraffe 

On  our  way  home  we  came  across  a  coalition  of  3  cheetah  brothers  on  blue  crane  link  coming  on  an  easterly  direction  towards  the  road  when  we  spotted  them  they  were  about  200 meters  from  the  road  we  waited  for  them  until  they  were  on  the  road  .They  started  walking  along  the  road  towards  the  homestead  and  they  were  really  curious  about  spotting  the  game  as  they  always  used  every  elevated  spot  to  try  and  scan  the  whole  area 

To our surprise one of the males sniffed the buffalo droppings. First  we  thought  it  was  trying  to  mark  the  territory,  to  our  surprise  it  started  eating  the buffalo  droppings  for  a moment.  It  was  really  surprising  as  cheetahs  eating fecal matter is not a common occurrence.

Sam

On Saturday the 29th Springbok lodge headed out on the afternoon drive looking for Elephant. We knew that they were feeding in the valley near the lodge, as we seemed to have missed them by mere minutes on the earlier morning game drive.

We came across a lovely Journey of Giraffe. A herd consisting of an old bull, females and calves of various ages. We had a great view of a little month old calf, still with part of the dried umbilical cord attached to its belly.




Heading back to the lodge after stopping for a lovely Sundowner at "Social point', The Elephant herd had emerged from the valley. They sauntered into the spruit below Springbok lodge where we all had a fantastic view of the breeding herd.  We first spotted the Big bull. 'BFE' (Beefy). who was slowly approaching the breeding herd. He then joined the some of his ladies at the stream for a "Sundowner". We watched them drawing gallons of water into their trunks and then pouring it down their throats. Elephant can draw about 14 liters of water into their trunks. The Trunk is acutely a muscular nose which serves as a , "hand", extra "foot", & signaling device aswell as a tool for gathering food, siphoning water, dusting, digging, smelling touching.

The young bull, A teenager in elephant terms, lifted his trunk and smelt BFE approaching. He tried to block BFE's way to the rest of the herd. But BFE, toping the scales at about 6 tons, just gently pushed him back. The young bull eventually just turned sideways and submitted the road to old BFE.

It was the perfect way to end a game drive. We spent about about a half and hour watching the herd greet the old bull and see the little elephant calves totter about in play. 
The herd slowly moved along in the direction of "Elephant Rock lodge". finally we were able to pass by and return to the lodge. The Elephant bull &herd still spent the evening in the area. While we were sitting in the boma around the fire before dinner, Their trumpets and rumblings could be heard n the cool night air.