Daily Archive for July 5th, 2007

Immaculate Leopard: Video

Khayeni – hunter supreme.

Scatter
After her full night of activity last night I expected Khayeni to spend most of her night tonight resting. But not so. She was already active at dusk stalking impala. But in the fading light she blew her cover and the impala snorted her out of there.
She covered quite some distance through the rest of the night hunting. And hugely successful she was making some dozen kills! No not impala, a dozen Mice! At least they will keep her going for yet another day.
She was obviously fairly well satisfied as from midnight she spent the rest of the night resting.

Legging it
At dawn a gentle drizzle sprinkled itself across the bushveld, enough to wet most things and us in the vehicle before passing over, only to be back a short while later. And so the morning went. Raining and stopping.

Many deep
With my daughters we continued on south and encountered this large herd of buffalo at Hwata pan. But they weren’t interested in drinking and moved through the area grazing.

Spread

Tjololo 5th July 2000

The Tjololo Diaries

5th July 2000
Tjololo spent the night walking his whole boundary along the Sand river which was very frustrating. This area is just about all inaccessible allowing us only the occasional glimpse of him. Most of the time we were just following his calls. Only at dawn did he head east away from the river and then south.
It’s encouraging to see him doing a lot of marking north of the Kapen, an area I thought he’d been pushed out of by the other male. This makes me more positive that he won his ordeal the other night.


Early in the evening Tjololo surprised us coming out the river having killed a vervet monkey. This requires huge amounts of hunting skills as these primates are extremely vigilant. Foraging in groups they usually see a predator long before it’s even aware of them. I know of only 2 other leopard/monkey kills in the 5 years we’ve spent at Mala Mala.