Daily Archive for August 18th, 2007

Lions not sharing: Video

The Nduna pride were highly successful last night killing a huge buffalo bull on Banyini. By dawn they were not the most appealing to look at lions with stomachs distended beyond anything looking slightly respectable.

Over eaten
But that still didn’t stop them maintaining control of the carcass all day and continuing to feed all day, like only lions can. When you’re full you MUST just eat more!

The feast
The vultures were there at dawn for the long wait. But by dusk they were desperate and started venturing towards the carcass. The lions of course not eager to share waddled over to them sending them packing.

Waiting game
While most of the pride commandeered the carcass a lioness went on a walk about on Banyini open area to torment any prey species she could find. A herd of wildebeest and a family of zebra spent about half an hour shouting their abuse at her, before moving on to graze.

Watching

Without having fed the vultures left in their one’s and two’s at sunset to find a roosting spot before dark. And so they’ll wait out another long cold hungry night.

Vulture roost

Tjololo 17th August 2000

The Tjololo Diaries

17th August 2000
Soon after sunset Tjololo was on the corner of his south eastern boundary.  How they found each other, initially without sound Tjololo met up with his male neighbour from the south east. They had met before, the encounter lasting about an hour without much ado.
For the rest of the night the 2 leopards would lie up growling at each other about 20m apart. At the same time they would often scrape mark in the grass and also roll over on their sides as if to say “see how cool and relaxed I am. I’m not scared of you.”


Then one would get up and the other would follow moving parallel to each other along their invisible boundary only to lie up again growling.
This went on the whole night with the leopards only having moved about half a km.
By dawn when we left they were still at and the Mala Mala rangers had them going on with it late into the morning.
We followed their every move hoping to capture that big event, but they never came together. A long frustrating night.