Last night was an eventful drive which started with a fantastic sighting of our big herd of buffalo. They were moving away from a dam after having had a drink. The herd, which consists of around 300 animals were quite spread out. There are lots of youngsters in the group at the moment and we watched a number of the young buffalo drinking milk from their mothers. Because the buffalo are usually mobile the youngsters drink from between the back legs as the mother is walking which is quite amusing as you often see the little ones with dung on their heads! As we were watching the herd there was an impressive fight between some of them. One of the females who looked as though she might be in oestrus was becoming very aggressive with both males and females in the group. On the road in front of our vehicle she had a hectic dispute with another female, clashing horns and knocking her down in the road. After stopping for drinks as the sun came down with a beautiful view of the mountains we set off on our search for lions. Whilst looking for the lions we were lucky enough to see 2 porcupines. Usually these nocturnal animals are quite shy and run into the bush as we come past. But these 2 porcupines gave us a great show by running down the road in front of us – even providing us with a good photo opportunity which doesn’t happen often. After a while we were then rewarded with a fantastic lion sighting. We came across a female lion and her 2 10 month old cubs. The cubs were being extremely playful with each other and as we found them the young male was playing with a leopard tortoise. He did not kill it but was very curious about it! The young male and female were busy entertaining themselves whilst their mother seemed to be on the hunt for dinner.

Story by: Sarah-Estelle Sangster-Kapama River Lodge Ranger