Browns in Kruger September 2024

[Bushcraft]

5th September Skukuza

The plan this morning was to head up the H1-2/down the H12/H4-1 to Lower Sabie again as the entire western/H3 section of the park seemed rather quiet on all the sighting boards, but once again it was initially quiet all the way down to Lower Sabie except for the odd hyena crossing the road.

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We stopped at Lower Sabie for the loo and then continued down to the H10 bridge to spend some time with those locals before turning to head back up to Skukuza.

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[Bushcraft]

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As we approached the Lubyelubye area a teenage ellie started having a tantrum at us, but his Rambo attitude failed as I moved forward to get a better view of the buffalo in the riverbed.

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[Bushcraft]

The Cow happened to look inland while we were parked off watching the buffalo and she spotted some movement in the distance, so I quickly repositioned. The dots in the distance started getting larger and the Cow chirped while smiling

“It’s lion approaching”

I’m not certain how she spotted them that far out, but I’m at max zoom on our camera in the pic below.

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Sightings in the Lubyelubye area can develop into chaos in minutes, so we plotted the direction of the lions and estimated where along the H4-1 they would appear, parked and switched off. Fortunately, the buffalo were around 50m ahead of us, so passing OSV’s thought we were watching them and left us alone.

Minutes went by and no lion, so I was getting edgy that we were in the wrong spot, but then they started to appear out the bush almost where we guessed they would appear and they were already plotting the buffalo bigtime and the 1 lioness was using our car to hide her view from the buffalo.

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[Bushcraft]

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More and more lions of various ages started appearing and it became obvious that we only had a few more seconds of peace left.

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[Bushcraft]

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Some of the lions stayed on the inland side of the road and 3 crossed the road to park off in the shade behind the buffalo. Passing cars and an OSV had now spotted them, so it was quickly turning into chaos, therefore we had to choose which lions to stick with before getting parked in and we selected the 3 in the shade since they were the closest to the buffalo.

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Nothing happened for a few minutes and then the one lioness started sneaking closer to the road and closer to the buffalo.

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[Bushcraft]

The lioness then snuck down the bank and out of sight, so we just stayed put as the other 2 lionesses hadn’t moved yet, but the wait seemed to go on forever and as per normal distraction set in, so when she burst from the bushes around 15 minutes later, we duffed pics of her initial charge at the buffalo and only got the pic below as the buffalo chased her back into the bush.

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The other lions that were further up the road also then charged the buffalo, but we were now jammed in by other cars, so gave up on trying to get pics of the action and just watched what we could see between the OSVs and other cars.

Those lions were also repelled, but I think the lions were just testing the herd to find a weakness or a weak individual as none of the charges seemed totally committed.

This backwards and forwards between the two parties continued for a few more minutes until the buffalo bundled together and headed down to the riverbed. The lions then also started to move off down into the riverbed and out of sight, so we quickly snapped a few last pics of those close to us.

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Once all the lions had moved off down the bank and out of sight, the crowd started to thin out and we could move again, so we went a little up the road to continue watching the buffalo and their body language with the hope that they would indicate to us where the lion were now, however the buffalo seemed fully relaxed again, but we waited as they slowly made their way across the river to join the rest of the herd.

We waited another 20 minutes and no lion appeared to also cross the Sabie River, so they must have given up on the buffalo and were parking off somewhere in the shade for the rest of the day, so we continued on back towards Skukuza which only produced the normal animal sightings, including a Brown Snake Eagle which we did get a pic of.

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To be continued

[Lisbeth]

Cat whisperer Or rather reader of the predator mind

Visiting Kruger during summer might not be the best sightings-wise, but at least you avoid the crowds and you get away from the cold at home

[Flutterby]

Not kidding, many previous trips produced over 20 leopard in the same timeframe, so this trip didn't match up with regards to leopard sightings. I have also mellowed with age, so we don't search like we used to.

And we were ecstatic with our 9 sightings!

Fantastic spotting by the Cow, and great lion pics!

[Richprins]

A long day trip, Bushy!

Always a buggered hippo at the H10 bridge!

Never noticed the red eye on the cormorant like that, crisp pics!

And of course the rare stalking pose of the lioness, totally different with the ears flat like that!

[Pumbaa]

Really fantastic lion shots, Bushcraft