Lions of Timbavati

[Potato]

Tanda Tula update

The lions played along nicely again this week, and our guests saw the cats on most days. Sightings were made up mostly of the Mayambula Pride and their Skorro males – sometimes together in their entirety, but more often than not split into smaller fragments. We saw the pride on a very motivated hunt one evening until the wind started howling – the weather system was blowing in fast – and after that, some of the pride members seemed to lose the others and spent the next couple of hours wandering around alone until they eventually regrouped.  A day later, the whole pride was lying together looking very fat-bellied and continuing the trend of us only ever seeing them after they’ve finished their kills. One morning, we heard another male roar close to the pride in the far west, which was interesting. The two Skorro males were in the far east, and the lionesses soon got up and walked in the opposite direction. We didn’t manage to find the roaring male, as he was deep in the bush, but I suspect it was likely one of the Vuyela males.  The next day, the Mayambula pride were unsurprisingly found in the heart of their territory in the east.

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This week also saw the reappearance of the Ross and Hercules females as they popped in for a brief period. Both girls were looking in good shape and their bond seemed as strong as any other lionesses, which is fascinating considering they are unrelated. The biggest surprise of the week was the appearance of eight members of the Avoca Pride in the south-west of our concession. Whilst we didn’t venture down to see them, it was interesting to hear that this pride made a very rare and random visit to our area and were encroaching into the Giraffe Pride territory. It seems they were trailing a buffalo herd and this led to them coming north, but time will tell if it was a one-off visit, or not. Reply