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