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Leopard Hills Game Reserve - Ranger´s Report
11-11-2005
It certainly is warming up just a tad out here in the harsh African bush, our first month of spring has come and gone and it was a scorcher, with a top temperature of 45 degrees celcius, that’s 113 degrees Fahrenheit, being recorded. These temperatures are fluctuating greatly though, from a couple of really hot days, followed by cooler overcast days with the immanent threat of some rain, we can only hold our breaths and wait for the much needed and hoped for rain. We did have one short shower during the month though which provided a little relief for the animals and started the grass growing; this 12.5 mm was certainly not enough to sustain proper growth though, only time will tell if the much needed rain will eventually come.
With the impalas due to start lambing within the next two weeks, some fresh grass will be essential to the lambs survival, not only for food, but also for shelter, as the first couple of days in an impalas life are spent hiding in the grass. Impalas are born scentless and hide from predators by lying motionless in the vegetation, with a lack of shelter provided by the minimal volumes of grass; a lot of the young lambs will not have enough cover to adequately hide away, and may be detected by the roaming predators.
Rhinos
Its getting to be a bit of habit for me to write about our phenomenal rhino sightings, some things we are just more than spoiled with, and one of those are the large numbers of rhinos present in our Reserve. One thing that this does lead to though is conflict, conflict between the males as they jostle and fight to try and establish territories. We are seeing more and more confrontational encounters between different males hoping to stake their claim on the prime pieces of land near the remaining water sources. This is providing us and our guests with fantastic viewing of these animals interacting, and displaying their aggression, and primal instinctive behavior.
Other than these sightings we are still regularly encountering large numbers of Rhinos on our drives. They are at present only White Rhinos, the Black Rhino that made an appearance in the past has yet to return, but reports were made earlier in the month by our neighbours of this individual coming very close to crossing into our reserve.
Elephants
The River, albeit dry and not flowing at the moment, is still the biggest attractant for the elephants, the vegetation here is still green, and the elephants are spending their days snoozing in the shade provided by the large Jackalberry, Weeping Boer Bean, Tamboti, Sausage, Leadwood and Fig trees. They then amble down to the river to quench their thirsts; they do this at this time of the year by digging in the dry river bed till they reach the water table that is barely below the surface of the sand in the river. The water here is clean and cool and much tastier than stagnant hot water found in the pans and dams dotted around the reserve.
We continue to have great viewing of elephants, elephants in all forms, from lone bachelors to large herds with many calves. The lodge has also become somewhat of a hotspot for elephants in the recent weeks, they, especially the lone bachelors, come to drink from the plunge pools in front of the rooms, esp., rooms 5, 6 and 7. Who knows, you may be as lucky as some of our guests to have an elephant come to drink from your pool while you are relaxing in your room.
Buffalo
The frequency of our Buffalo sightings has also stayed constant throughout the month of October. We have had sporadic viewing of the large herd which numbered about 500 individuals for a while. The feeding pressure then forced the herd to break up into two different groups. Other than the herd we also encounter the smaller groups of bulls regularly. One group of about 25 bulls have become semi resident fairly close to the lodge and we get to see this group the most of all at the moment, but with Buffalo nothing is permanent as they aren’t territorial, and we will probably lose this group as they venture a little further away from the lodge and its surrounds.
Cheetah
Still no changes in the frequency of our cheetah sightings, these cats are still being very elusive with sightings being few and far between. It really is a random sighting and any day now our sightings totals of these individuals may increase.
One of the factors that may also be contributing to the low frequency of cheetah sightings could be the staggering high numbers of lions in the reserve. They are at the moment doing amazingly well.
Lions
The old female from the Ottawa Pride has unfortunately died, she was on her last legs and with no teeth, her condition was deteriorating very quickly. It was only a matter of time till she passed away. We saw this female infrequently, but it still is a loss to the reserve. This loss though makes space for the next generation of lions to grow up successfully, with limited feeding pressure for the many mouths now on the reserve.
The Ottawa pride now number: 4 adult females, 2 sub-adult males, 1 sub-adult and 6 juveniles. They are still being dominated by the Nhlanguleni Male Lion who spends his time between the Ottawa Pride and trying to take over the Sand River Pride.
The Sand River Pride still numbers 12 individuals, and they are doing really well, the 4 females are providing wonderful sustenance for the 8 youngsters by killing frequently. They are also venturing further and further south, because the Castleton/Ximungwe pride are spending all their time in the southern part of the reserve creating a vacuum in the central section, which is being occupied by the Sand River Pride.
The Castleton pride is doing amazingly well and the cubs are getting too big to be called cubs anymore. All 12 are still alive, and getting bigger and fatter by the day. The 7 adults are also all in good health, with the male spending all his time with this pride at the moment. He has not left to go to the Ravenscourt Pride in over a month now, we also have not seen this pride for at least a month, but reports state that all is still wonderful with the 10 lions in this pride.
Why has the male decided to stick around? Why are the cubs so fat and getting so big?
Well, the answer is fairly simple; we have again started a restocking of Wildebeest programme. This time last year and the year before, the reserve management undertook a project to re-establish a viable breeding population of Wildebeest in the reserve. The numbers of these creatures never stabalised in the times when fences were still enclosing the animals and confining them to limited areas. We now have received a good couple of hundred of these animals, all in payment for Rhinos that have been sent to different areas in Africa.
With the sudden influx of wildebeest numbers in the south of the reserve, where they are being held and released, the Castleton pride have concentrated their activities here and it certainly is paying off handsomely, they are a great hunting pride with a very high success rate and have managed to kill no less than 14 of these animals in the last 3 weeks, 4 in a single 10 minute period one morning about 2 weeks ago, Rudi was just in time to see the last of the 4 being killed. Ryan went 1 better a week later and he saw the pride killing two of the wildebeest in an evening drive. The lions are most deffinatly having the time of their lives. We will keep you up to date regarding the numbers of lions and wildebeest, and esp Lions eating wildebeest.
Leopards
Leopard sightings have been great again this month. The most frequently seen leopard was the Wallingford Male, he has been rather easy to find and has had many kills that kept him occupied for about 2 days at a time. The only other male leopard sighted was the Ottowa male, the two sub adult males and the Kinky Tail male have all been absent from our traversing for the duration of October.
Females have been plentiful, we have seen 7 different females this month, they were the ever reliable, Makwela, who has been absent from the area for the last three days, Shangwa, her Youngster, the 2year old female, Mambirri, Thai Dam female, Hippo Dam Female, And Mangeng Female (the milky eyed female).
The Mangeng Female had a kill in the far south and east of the reserve in the last week of the month, reports from the neighbouring reserve is that she has a single cub, this cub was not seen at the impala kill, it seems the cub is still too young to be feeding on any meat products and has not yet left the den site chosen by its mother.
The other female with a single cub is the Thai Dam Female, she was seen with her youngster that should now be about 5 months old, feeding on an impala that the mother valiantly defended from being stolen by 3 hyaenas. It did take its toll on her though and she was in a foul mood the following morning, snarling and chasing anything that moved close to her.
Shangwa also has cubs, the whereabouts of her den site is known, but it is impossible to get a vehicle close by, so we will have to wait for her to bring her cubs out of hiding.
Rudi and his guests had a wonderful sighting of a kill, in broad daylight, one early morning when Makwela managed to bring down an adult impala, she stalked to within 3meters of a herd that was crossing the road she was leopard crawling along, she burst at them and brought the impala down. Unfortunately for her it was stolen by a hyaena later that evening.
Specials
A good number of snakes have been spotted already this month, one highlight was a python busy swallowing a starling, this was seen late in the month by Ryan and Marius.
Rudi and Ryan had sightings on consecutive days of two different pangolins, what a treat, and lastly Marius had the good fortune of witnessing a tussle between a crocodile and a nyala bull, this all happened in a pool in the river where the crocodile tried to drag the nyala to the water where it could be drowned, and consumed. The next morning no sign of the nyala was found at the pool. Did he escape? We will never know.
That’s it from my side for this month. Keep reading the reports, no better, come visit again and experience these things first hand.
Sightings totals
for the Month
Elephant - 57
Lion - 68
Leopard - 46
Cheetah - 5
Buffalo - 43
Pangolin - 2
Rhino - 74
The Ranger Team - Leopard Hills
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