29/03/2024
It’s funny how things happen. After all the lion and cheetah action and even the amazing leopard we had had in the central Serengeti, we headed up to the north to look especially for leopard.
A lioness had killed a baby zebra about 20m from my guide tent. I tracked the spoor and that evening we found the culprit on a kopje behind /in camp. With CUBS. Even though we were on a leopard mission this was too good an opportunity to miss..cubs..4-6weeks old, in camp! That night a leopard and a hyena fought over the carcass outside my tent, keeping me up all night.. so exciting,AND the leopard was close by….
The next day- leopard tracks everywhere and headed north out of camp. So we headed to the lioness ‘den’.. wow, the cubs were out in the open playing! At dawn, so we spent a good section of the morning with them.. in view of camp and in sight of a rogue troop of baboons. That afternoon we decided to leave them be and not bring attention to their hiding spot..we continued tracking the leopard but the grass was too long and we were stumped. That night she called, that great sawing sound we all love to hear..OK.. tomorrow I would find her!
The next morning we found lioness tracks going back and forward from the hiding spot.. I figured the lionesses were moving the cubs..we tracked and tracked and even found the cub tracks where they must have been put down. Then the tracks headed into the long grasses and gullies and kopjes we couldnt access. That afternoon we spotted two lioness silhouettes on a kopje and now knew their new hiding spot. Tomorrows focus. As you can tell we had totally (nearly) been distracted from leopards! The next day. Wow! We found the cubs and also found where the lionesses had killed a Buffalo nearby. They had led the cubs to possibly their first meat meal! I said to the other guide this will surely give us a leopard. The final drive that afternoon we found a huge male lion on the carcass being mobbed by a herd of Buffalo and whilst we were making sure the cubs were ok, one of our eagle eyed guests exclaimed.. what’s that on the rock.. we turned to the other side and there was our beautiful leopardess bathed in the last sunlight of the day!
