Arathusa Safari Lodge blog

We’ve had yet another interesting few weeks out here in the Northern Sabi Sand.

Sightings are usually more prolific duringthe winter months, and this year has proved no different. We’ve seen some incredible things so far, and we’ve only just passed the season’s halfway mark.

We’ve laughed, we’ve been entertained, and we’ve had our hearts broken.

Winter is generally tough out here, but this year has seen more death than any other. It’s certainly been a dark time for all.

White-cloth (one of our older female leopards) was killed by Emsagwen (a new male leopard) a few days ago. We think she died while trying to protect her sub-adult male cub.

Leopards are known to practice infanticide, so it’s more than likely that Emsagwen was trying to get at the young male when White-cloth intervened. Unfortunately she was no match for this bigger, stronger male, and he quickly killed her by biting the back of the head and puncturing her skull. We haven’t seen the young cub since, so we’re not sure if he’s still alive or if he too has fallen prey to this new and dominant male.

For now the rest of our leopards all seem to be doing well, although given the rate that Emsagwen is adding notches to his belt (he also killed Ntima’s cubs a few weeks back) we’re all feeling a little uneasy at the moment.

Mafufenyane has been fairly scarce of late. He’s more than likely keeping a low profile in order to stay out of the new male’s way. On the odd occasion that he has been seen he’s looked fat and nervous, which, given the circumstances isn’t all bad. At least he’s eating!

Safari, on the other hand, has been showing up fairly regularly. We often bump into her on the driveway at night, when we’re almost back at the lodge.

Shadow (her granddaughter) is still putting a lot of pressure on her, but for now she seems to be holding her own.

We were lucky enough to find Salayexe and her two cubs up a tree with a large male impala. The sighting went from great to positively outstanding when Tyson (the father of the cubs) arrived to join his family for breakfast.

Four leopards in one morning. Wow!

We’ve had a number of large herds of elephant and buffalo on the property. A lot of them are using the waterhole in front of the lodge now that most of the smaller pans in the area have dried up. An old male elephant has also taken to hanging out in the area recently. His body size is average, but he has the hugest pair of tusks on him. Some of the biggest we’ve seen to date.

Rhino have been plentiful, with quite a few unknown individuals frequenting the area.

After last month’s lion war, the region’s dynamics have changed a lot.

We’ve named the four new young male lions the Macinghilanes, which means ‘the ones that walk in a line’. They haven’t ceased in their efforts to hunt down Mr T (no doubt they are still seeking revenge for the death of their brother), but so far they still haven’t had any luck.

They did succeed in catching and splitting up the Tsalala pride however, killing two of their cubs in the process. These four males have been around quite a bit lately, and we were lucky enough to find them feeding on a buffalo kill for a few days this past week.

The Styx pride has also been spotted on and off, and for the most part they seem to be doing okay. Their main aim no doubt being to avoid the Macinghilanes as much as possible.

We’ve seen the female cheetah quite a bit, with her young cub in tow. She appears to be using our airstrip as a base from which to hunt. The cub had a bad wound on her back left leg, which pierced right through her inner thigh. She seems to be healing quickly though, and we even saw her give a couple of warthogs the run around without too much trouble.

For now all we can do is watch and wait to see what happens next. With Emsagwen and the Macinghilanes foursome all staking a bold claim on the area, things are sure to remain interesting.

Hopefully there won’t be as much death in the next few weeks…but you never know.

We hope to see you soon.

Warm regards from the team at Arathusa Safari Lodge.