Daily Archive for November 4th, 2007

Lions try hard: Video

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Wildcaster
on November 4, 2007
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I had reports late yesterday of lions on a zebra kill near Nyamasikana pan.

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At first light I made my way up there and found 3 lions from the Nduna pride still feeding on their zebra mare. The young lioness was feeding on the foetus, almost full term. Presumably mom being heavily pregnant, was an easy target.

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As the sun warmed up the lioness tried to move the carcass into some shade from where she could keep an eye on it, but it was too much for her. The young male then tried his luck but also hardly moved it. In the meantime the hordes of vultures in the surrounding trees were getting excited at the prospect of a meal, but weren’t that fortunate as the lions dominated the carcass.
I let them be and with temperatures sky rocketing, I found the elephant herds at the top end of the dam. They were taking full advantage of any mud they could find.

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While watching the main herds in the dam, they suddenly all froze and looked to my north. On the way in was a lone elephant cow. So why the big deal? Then I saw the tiny little fellow at her legs. She had a very very young calf and the herds were all excited to see the little guy. Mom kept him protected from too much harassment and only briefly wallowed before moving off to graze.

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At Chekwa pan earlier I was surprised to see it totally deserted of elephants. But there were these 3 young White Rhino that came to drink.

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The elephants obviously wanted more than just a wallow and a drink, which is why I found them at the dam swimming.
It was a seriously hot day for me. Something I’ll get used to pretty quickly, but having been working at night for some time I’m just not used to it right now. But hey! We survive anyway even though it might not be too comfortable.

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Tjololo 3rd November 2000

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Wildcaster
on November 4, 2007
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The Tjololo Diaries

3rd November 2000
Rain 22mm.
The cloudy weather was with us all day and as we were about to leave camp the drizzle started but didn’t last long and the sun was soon out for sunset.
Tjololo and the Newington female were a long way further south. Tjololo’s interests were firmly set on hunting. He was on the trail of some impala for ages before he eventually met up with them. But again forgetting his professional approach he charged in to the herd without success. Having missed he followed their trail again for over an hour moving around in circles and often onto the route he’d just followed. We then wondered if he’d given up and was trying to follow up on his girl. She in the meantime was frantically following his trail that took her around in circles too.


Eventually they met up and were back to business with a big bang as a huge clap of thunder struck right over us. A major storm was about to strike. It did and we got our cover up just in time. Dale didn’t make it as he rushed back to camp but got hit by the brunt of the storm. He spent the whole morning drying out all his stuff.
The electric storm didn’t bode well for the Data line, which went down, and so the cam too, without our knowledge.
With the weather having cleared by dawn we headed to the hyaena den and were excited to see a mother suckling 2 cubs and there were another 2 cubs playing around. All the cubs nearly 2 months. So expect to see more of them.