MANAGER'S REPORT

Dear friends of Kings Camp. Hope you are all well.

After the rush of the festive season, Kings Camp saw two fairly quite weeks during the middle part of the month. This gave us all a chance to tackle general maintenance issues and prepare for the already very busy year ahead.

Rainfall has been good over the last six weeks and the bush is in an excellent healthy state. All looks good for the dry season, which is just around the corner.

Some of you are probably aware of the serious electricity supply that is being experienced in SA the moment with daily load shedding. If you are planning a trip to Kings soon, please have no fear as we have in addition to the electricity supply a back up generator to run the lodge. Thus, your stay will not be affected.

If you have not yet seen our new website, please take a few minutes to browse through it. The new site is really informative and portrays the beauty of the lodge accurately.

Morné has put together this month’s wildlife report with some fantastic pictures. Enjoy reading it.

Until next month, take care.

Warren and Lisha

RANGERS REPORT

General

Welcome back to the Kings Camp update site, where you can be sure to find the best updates of the latest happenings at Kings Camp and the Timbavati region. We had a brilliant start in 2008 and as illustrated in the first photograph we have a long road of possibilities ahead of us. So, come and visit us and be part of what still needs to be explored… we are looking forward to it!

Leopard

As per usual we had lots of memorable Leopard sightings this month. I will start off with the news of our latest arrivals, the M’bali cubs! But more about that in the “special sightings” section.

All of the resident females were very active in the area except the Rockfig female. We saw her once and she did appear pregnant… So hopefully she found herself a secluded area to use as a den site. Watch this space, we will keep you updated.

Ntombi, our newest resident female is now marking a much larger territory and this is getting her into quite a bit of trouble with the other well-settled females that are using those areas as home ranges. But so far she has managed well to keep marking in those areas. She is a very successful young Leopardess and spends a lot of time also around the camp. If you are lucky you might even see her wandering around the camp before a Game drive…

Rockfig jr. was seen twice this month. Sightings became scarcer since she moved her territory more to the South of our traversing. On the one occasion she was seen killing a Side-striped jackal. Odd, but jackals are scavengers and predators do not tolerate their presence while they are hunting… This jackal was following the wrong Leopard at the wrong time and she got rid of the pest!

Mangajani, the big resident male!

He continuously surprises us with his amazing capability to move vast distances through the night. We will locate him on an afternoon drive and the next morning he’ll be located 10-15 kilometers away! This successful male has a very large territory, which overlaps with the territories of five Leopardesses. He frequently runs into them when he crosses through their areas while hunting and patrolling. Now, these meetings could be quite violent for the females…

A male, being about twice the size of a female, doesn’t really tolerate her presence, unless they are in estrus. He sees females (or any other Leopard) as potential competition for the same basic food needs. Leopards are solitary creatures and members of the same species is competition for each other and males being so large just simply over-power females. This happened twice as we witnessed him fighting with the M’bali and Ntombi females barely three days apart.

Lion

Both of the resident prides was seen frequently and they were very successful with large sustainable prey.

The Machaton pride killed a young Buffalo, two Zebra’s and one big male Giraffe amongst other prey this month!! At “special sightings” I will share an amazing story with you that happened at the Buffalo kill. Currently they are spending most of their time South of our traversing and we haven’t seen them for almost one week. It is just a matter of time for them to come north again and then well have nice sightings to share with you.

The Sohobele pride was superb in all their efforts and managed to make quite a few sustainable kills and this kept the five youngsters in tip-top shape! Amongst other kills were two large Kudus and Waterbuck.

One sighting that stands out was at Java dam; The Lions were resting there after the one Kudu kill they had when a big Elephant bull showed up… The Lions were fine with this at first, but soon got nervous when the Jumbo approached a bit closer. As the first few cubs jumped to run for cover the Elephant realized that something was up! He started investigating and discovered more of the tawny cats lying around to play with. This was a lot of fun to watch and all of us had a brilliant time. After the Elephant left, the male Lion made it known that he did not think much of this game and roared loudly to state his opinion.

The Machaton pride from the south has spent quite a bit of time close to camp. This is always a great experience as you can hear them calling close by at night and sometimes you even get lucky enough to see them drinking water at the camp’s waterhole!

They also have done very well on kills this month, the biggest reward being a female Giraffe and her calf that they killed! It was a feast for about five days!!

Elephant and Cape Buffalo

The Elephant sightings were amazing and we had lots of brilliant sightings of them swimming in the big dams. The average herd sizes vary from about 15-60 animals and it is always a pleasant experience to have them feeding around a vehicle. Then you have the opportunity to see how they go to work to find their food, using their trunks, tusks and feet to great measures.

Early in the month we had good activity of large breeding herds, but they moved out of our traversing and we are awaiting their arrival soon to entertain us. Currently we have a lot of bachelor groups around, always a good sighting as they spend a lot of time at mud wallows (good for photography).

White Rhino

Mtenge-tenge was in and out of traversing this month. There are two intruding male White Rhinos and lots of effort is going into keeping them out of his territory, even if it means chasing them kilometers away from our operating area.

Fortunately we had a good number of sightings of him, the intruders and a few skittish newcomers to the area…

Special sightings

So, the section everyone is waiting for…

The M’bali female Leopard had two cubs and we estimate them to be about 6-8 weeks old! I happened to be at the right place at exactly the right time when she came from her den carrying one cub with the other running behind her! She was busy moving them to a new den and as soon as they crossed the road we left them alone to minimize disturbance with the youngsters. We hope that this time round she’ll be successful to raise the young ones.

The second special sighting was an affair between “Eternal Enemies”. Cynet, our guests and myself were fortunate enough to witness a fight between the Machaton pride of lions and a clan of hyenas in daylight hours. It lasted only about five minutes, but it was branded into everyone’s memories forever. The Lions managed to secure the Buffalo kill and finished feeding in peace.

The third one was of an amazing looking Tusker Elephant. This fellow only spent three days in the area and then disappeared.

Large Elephants are seen often, but to see big tuskers like this is considered a special occasion!

Until next time, take care.

Morné and the Kings Camp ranger team

Photography by Morné.