Good morning everybody,

This week has been slowly warming up and sightings have just kept flooding in.

While watching a Porcupine one night much to everyone’s surprise a female Leopard came ambling down the road and spent 20 minutes relaxing just five meters from the vehicle.

We’ve had the chance to see a female Elephant calf that is currently being weaned off milk, every time the calf has gone to suckle its mother will trumpet or give a deep rumble to discourage the baby. The mother has instead been teaching her baby to feed by herself, we’ve seen how she demonstrates how to strip bark off branches by standing on one end of the branch and slowing peeling the bark back, her baby will then make a semi-successful attempt at this, often only stripping the smallest of sections off. I’m pleased to say she has over this week has made some improvement in to her technique.

A female Cheetah with two 11 month old cubs has been relaxing in the open plain near the game lodge. The youngsters have provided constant entertainment, making use of play trees to scout the area for potential prey, if they find some unsuspecting game they may attempt to catch it but at the moment they’re too inexperienced to successfully hunt for themselves. Instead the cubs are learning by watching how their mother stalks and chases prey, once the prey has been tackled the mother will immobilise the catch, the cubs then have an opportunity to play with the unlucky animal and can practise for themselves.

That’s all folks
The Ranger Team