MANAGERS REPORT

Dear Friends and Colleagues

Right I guess that is it then, we officially bid farewell to winter and welcome in our first day of spring on the 1st September. There is definitely a warming to the days and the chilly mornings are a thing of the past.

Once again so nice to see so many familiar faces back with us at Leopard Hills, special mention of Michael and Shona Price, great to see you with us again, and we look forward to seeing you back at the Lodge in February.

It was also wonderful to be able to spend some quality time with Trevor and Theresa Wells. After spending a couple of days at Leopard Hills, Trevor, Theresa, Vanessa, Marius, Louise and myself, along with our daughters, spent two amazing days in Zambia, in Livingstone at the Falls,  and then moved onto Zimbabwe where we spent 5 days on a houseboat on Kariba doing a little Tiger Fishing. It was a holiday of a lifetime and something I thing we should all do again in the not too distant future. We are really looking forward to seeing you with the whole family in October.

Employee of the Month

Nicoleth Mkhantswa has been nominated as Employee of the Month for August, well done and well deserved.

Community Development

Thank you to everyone for the support and donations to the Day Care Centre this month, as always much appreciated and I can not emphasise enough how much can, and is achieved with all these donations, not matter how big or small.

Special mention to Charmaine Sporbeck for the box of clothes you took all the time and effort to package up and send all this way, and also a huge thank you to Samanta Monko for the package of books that you sent through.

Rangers Report

Over to Marius and the Team for this months Report, but before signing off, I must congratulate the Trackers for all achieving there level three status, the highest level they can attain, we are very proud of you all, well done for leading the way for all others to follow.

Duncan and Louise Rodgers
Operations Director and General Manager

RANGERS REPORT

We are past the middle of the year, day time temperatures are warming up and the sightings are spectacular as always. Leopard Hills once again was the stage for one of the greatest shows on earth. This month we have had one spectacular lion sighting after the other and with the return of the big herd of more than 300 buffalo things got extremely exiting.

Lions

It was a warm winters evening when our guests, Hannes and I sat with the Ximungwe Pride of lions. After a short while the lionesses woke up but unlike previous encounters they didn’t stretch, urinate and lay down again. They got up, rubbed heads and marched straight onto the open plain. After covering about a kilometre they came across a herd of blue wildebeest and impala, but didn’t make any attempt to stalk, instead they still carried on South straight towards the herd of buffalo which we saw grazing earlier in the afternoon.

We followed the lions in total darkness and after about 40 minutes we sat under the African stars knowing that we were about to witness the ultimate battle, relentless enemies, lions and buffalo. About 10 minutes later Hannes alerted me via the radio that they were successful. I drove forward and there it was, my dream, seeing the Ximungwe Pride of lions taking on an adult Buffalo bull. I have been viewing this pride for the last 5 years, watching a pride of 7 turning into 21, just to be reduced back to 7 through the hardship of nature 5 years later.

The lions desperately hung onto the bull, sinking their razor sharp claws and teeth deeper and deeper into the bellowing buffalo’s thick skin. The buffalo’s deep distress call wasn’t for nothing and minutes later a thick cloud of 300 buffalo’s appeared onto the scene ready to do battle, ready to give everything they posses for their fallen herd member.

The lions knew the counter weapon of horns and hooves were about to connect with them and their previous grip of death was suddenly nothing more than a quick fading memory. There was dust and bellowing buffalo all over, and in the beam of our spot lights we could see the lions launching one attack after the other, after about half an hour of battle the lions slowly moved away to regroup and rethink their plan of attack.

It was late and we decided to take a slow drive back to the lodge, all the while thinking what had we done to  deserve this; to witness Mother Nature in her rawest form, that of life and death in the African Savanna.

Both the Othawa Pride and the Sand River Pride have had a very successful month.

Raymond and his guests saw the Othawa Pride with their 6 fast growing cubs feeding off a waterbuck kill in the Northern most part of our traversing area.

Hannes and his guests followed the Sand River Pride one morning as he left camp and after about an hour the female split away from the 5 cubs heading into some very thick bush. After about 5 minutes the cubs starting running straight to the bushes where the females were in and after some careful manoeuvring he found all 7 lions feeding off an impala

With most of the pans already dried up the Sand River provides a constant source of water for all the animals. The Sand River Pride are always quick to capitalize on this and made numerous kills around the river most notably nyala and kudu antelope.

Leopard

For all the regular readers of our monthly report and all our guests Makwela is definitely the star of our show. This month we have some tragic news regarding Makwela and her new cubs. In the beginning of the month our new territorial male leopard the Tekwaan Male killed one of Makwela’s cubs, this is a natural process when a new male leopard moves into an area.  Clever Makwela then decided to take the cubs to the rocky outcrop outside the reserve where they were born. We haven’t seen her for almost 3 weeks now, but the good news is that at the time of writing this Makwela was seen out side the reserve by the villagers and that she is still doing well.

In the end of the month we observed some extremely rare behaviour. Makwela’s previous youngster the Hlaba Nkunzi female which is now just over 3 years old has been following the Tekwaan Male leopard around, the way that a female in oestrus will follow a male. She even made some attempts to try and mate with him. He was very tolerating of her presence, until day 5 when he killed an impala and every time she came to close to him he aggressively growled at her.

Cheetah

We have had some amazing sightings of the male cheetah which territory stretches throughout our traversing area. It is great to see him on a regular basis even with the amount of lions that are present at the moment.

Elephant

In the last month of August we saw so many elephants in our traversing area.

Herds numbering up to a 100 individuals were seen almost daily especially in and around the Sand River.

We also had some phenomenal sightings of a massive bull elephant with a single tusk. With him are his 3 askari’s (young male elephant) who look after him and in return learn all there is to learn about survival in the African Bush.

Buffalo

With the return of the huge herd of more than 300 buffalo and the amount of herds of buffalo bulls that we saw in the last month, buffalo was almost guaranteed when our guests stayed for 3 nights or more.

Rhino

Once again we have had an amazing month of rhino viewing at Leopard Hills. The crash of 7 rhino was seen frequently and we still see no less than 3 females with calves less than 6 months old.

Several small pans in the South of our traversing area have been extremely productive and spending sometime in the late afternoon will more often than none deliver top class rhino sightings as these prehistoric giants come for their late afternoon drink.

Specials

A month of some phenomenal specials, our rangers saw pangolin, civet cat, serval, honey badgers and several sightings of genet cats. All above mention animals are mainly nocturnal and seeing these shy creatures is always a pleasant surprise.

Till next month.

Marius Coetzee and the Leopard Hills ranger team