Another search for the mother leopard and her cubs this morning at Ngala Private Game Reserve. We manage to find the mother, well hidden in scrub. She’s determined to nap until we go away and leave her alone. Her cubs fled at the sound of the vehicle crashing through the undergrowth to find her. Since yesterday, the family has managed to devour enough of the impala to drag it up the tree.
We embark on a fruitless search for lions, which are nowhere to be found. It’s a good morning for birding though – we spot a Wahlberg’s eagle high up a tree and a lilac-breasted roller. A relaxed young giraffe is happy to have his portrait taken as well.
The best sighting of the morning at breakfast – the local vervet monkey makes a well-timed leap from a tree, scampers past my table and snatches an apple from the table well behind me. It’s disappeared by the time anyone can react. Score: Monkeys 1, Humans 0.
Rustling outside the tent window makes me think the monkeys have to visit. But no, it’s this handsome young Nyala buck, grazing on the leaves around the tent. He looks at me carefully each time he hears the shutter fire, but concludes the wall of the outside shower is sufficient protection and returns to the important business of eating!
The afternoon game drive starts as another fruitless search for lions. A couple of hours in, no sign of them. An extended family of common dwarf mongeese are happy loll about in the late afternoon sunlight grooming each other.
We’ve almost given up for the evening when Norman (the tracker) hears monkeys alerting in the drainage ditch behind us. A bit of driving around, and as we are about to give up yet again we find an adult male leopard making his way towards the waterhole. He ends up showing more interest in sniffing and rolling in a female leopard’s urine, and then proceeds to have an appetizer of buffalo shit. I have the leopard to myself – no other vehicles are in the vicinity, and we are able to spend a happy 45 minutes watching this completely unfazed leopard going about his business.
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[…] the shuttle flight back to Johannesburg. In a bizarre coincidence, we meet Norman (my tracker from Ngala Tented Camp last year) driving arriving passengers from the airstrip as we head to it. He’s a long way from […]