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The lions taunted us all week; every trip to the south-east in search of the Mayambula pride saw us finding tracks of where the lionesses had walked on top of our tracks during the night, but each time, they went down into the impenetrable Machaton Riverbed where the den site is. Tracks confirm that they are still there with the cubs, but they certainly are testing our patience by not showing themselves! Over the course of the week we did find one Skorro male near the den roaring for his brother, and on another occasion we found two of the younger lionesses, but other than that, we had to use our imagination and picture them walking all over the show! The River Pride spent a couple of days in the area, but it did take a little bit of work to track them down. The lionesses are looking fantastic, and all five youngsters are getting bigger by the week. There is still no sign of the Nharhu male following the pride this far south. In the west, tracks for the Giraffe Pride were reported a few times, and a single lioness was found one morning, but we didn’t venture that far to look them.
A consistent split is being seen in the River pride of late - with an emerging breakaway group of 3 females, 3 sub-adult males and 2 cubs often sighted apart from the main pride. As mentioned in previous reports, this behaviour is not unusual once the numbers swell upwards of 20 individuals. In-fighting over food becomes more fierce than usual and young cubs especially will suffer from not getting enough to eat. Apart from these, the dominant males Hosi and Socha have been wandering in and out of the area - moving between their scattered females - and the remaining 16+ members of the pride continue to reign supreme across the traverse.
On one occasion, guide Nick was enjoying a tranquil sundowner drink at one of our favourite lookout spots over the Klaserie River when pandemonium erupted nearby, signalling some impala clearly under attack. By the time our guests had rushed back on the vehicle and zoomed in the direction of the ruckus, the kill was already over and the pride were fervently feeding over the scraps of 4 or 5 impala babies. A grisly scene!
A consistent split is being seen in the River pride of late - with an emerging breakaway group of 3 females, 3 sub-adult males and 2 cubs often sighted apart from the main pride. As mentioned in previous reports, this behaviour is not unusual once the numbers swell upwards of 20 individuals. In-fighting over food becomes more fierce than usual and young cubs especially will suffer from not getting enough to eat. Apart from these, the dominant males Hosi and Socha have been wandering in and out of the area - moving between their scattered females - and the remaining 16+ members of the pride continue to reign supreme across the traverse.
On one occasion, guide Nick was enjoying a tranquil sundowner drink at one of our favourite lookout spots over the Klaserie River when pandemonium erupted nearby, signalling some impala clearly under attack. By the time our guests had rushed back on the vehicle and zoomed in the direction of the ruckus, the kill was already over and the pride were fervently feeding over the scraps of 4 or 5 impala babies. A grisly scene!
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Hosi and socha are the fathers of 3 nharu males ( only 1 alive now) who governs river pride ( of timbavati) . Nharu male, scorocoro, seems to be 6-7 yrs old.
So hosi and socha must be around 11+ atleast Or even 12. I think the subs of river pride ( original) are also ready to be nomad and now there are new cubs.
It's very rare to see, lions sire 3+ set if cubs from the same pride.
They have done extremely great job by controling river pride for so long.
(02-13-2022, 08:56 AM)DARK MANE Wrote: Hosi and socha are the fathers of 3 nharu males ( only 1 alive now) who governs river pride ( of timbavati) . Nharu male, scorocoro, seems to be 6-7 yrs old.
So hosi and socha must be around 11+ atleast Or even 12. I think the subs of river pride ( original) are also ready to be nomad and now there are new cubs.
It's very rare to see, lions sire 3+ set if cubs from the same pride.
They have done extremely great job by controling river pride for so long.
Not Hosi and Socha, their fathers are 2 Old River Pride males Hondo and Xantsema.
The Vuyela males are becoming potential legendary kings of Kruger and to have any moment with them is a privilege! The giant cats graced us with their presence a few times before we had to let them go as they moved off into Klaserie. The following sighting was a wonderful warm morning spent with the Mayanbula pride playing and moving towards a new resting spot.
The big news of the week was that Ginger got our first viewing of three of the new Mayambula cubs, albeit a brief one. I then spent the next week trying my luck at the den site and only got to see tracks, fat mothers, proud fathers and little lion cub tracks around the den. I could even hear their cuteness emanating from the bushes, but sadly they did not want to show themselves. It does appear that three mothers have dropped their cubs, with one of the lionesses having a den site just south of the accessible one we have been staking out. Contrary to last week’s frustrations of looking for the lions, almost every trip to the south-east produced lion sightings, including the two Skorro males. We will keep on trying, but it really cannot be long now before we get to see them!
The River Pride also helped fill in the gaps when the Mayambula Pride wasn’t playing along, and we got to enjoy their company on a couple of occasions. The first time we got to see them they had just finished a young wildebeest, but from the size of the bellies, it looked as though the Nharhu male got the lion’s share of the meal. A few days later the pride was back – sans male – and we watched as they went after some zebra, but they were not successful. Tracks for the Ross and Hercules lionesses also showed that they were still around, but they remained unseen.
Mapoza male there. Guide said at the beginning that some other coalition is pushing on the Mapoza's male boundary and those males are more musscular than Mapoza. One could wonder if which male coalition was she talking about as quite a lot of them there are in the arena - most notably Birmingham/Torchwood and Sumatra/Hercules, but also Black Dams and Monwanas if guide could mistaken them for dominant males.
There also some young male. Guide say that he is from Giraffe pride, but to me it rather looks like one of the Monwana males:
