Baby Leopards

We woke up this morning to a wonderful sight, a large herd about 30 eland cows came into the river to drink and with them 16 brand new eland calves, all caramel in colour and full of the joys of spring. It was such a great opportunity to watch them up close cavorting in the river as they are usually quite shy and mostly we just see their behinds disappearing into the dust.

Oscar, a very handsome two year old hand reared male serval and a female reared for release have been introduced to each other. We were a little worried that Oscar would get a thorough beating from his new lady love but it appears that love is in the air and for the moment all seems well in the honeymoon suite. The objective is to release the kittens into the reserve once they are mature enough to fend for themselves.

Arni, our orphan bushbuck is flourishing. His release into the big, scary world will coincide well with the rains breaking. By the time the landscape is lush and green again he will be old enough to follow the other wild pair of bushbuck that spend most of the day baby sitting him on a sandy patch we call our lawn.

The three new born leopard cubs we found on a game drive are doing very well and have started following their Mom around. All three appear to be strong and healthy and are covering fairly large areas already. With the end of the dry season their hunting is good and with some luck all three will survive.