Morning drives were reaching ridiculous proportions this month, with some guest’s ticking off hyena, lion, wild dog packs x 2, wild dog puppies and all the general game before a good brunch at 11am. Add a sprinkling of cheetahs and the odd leopard, and people were starting to wonder if they hadn’t just arrived at some kind of zoo.
It was all 100% natural though, and was the result of hard work paying off from the trackers and guides, who spent the time following the animals’ footprints and finding even the most elusive of animals.
There were a few surprises thrown in this month – the resident pack of dogs is still going strong with all 10 puppies alive and well, but on the 8th of August, another group of dogs was spotted. The pack size was a total of 7 adults, and we could not recognize the pack members as any we had seen before, so where they had come from no one knows. Around the middle of the month, the puppies were big enough to leave the den, and follow the adults, but sightings have still been good with them being seen fairly regularly.
Lions were seen almost every day, mostly doing what lions do best – resting – but we were also lucky enough to see the four intruding males take on two resident males, in a tussle over territory.
A sudden change in the temperature to a high of 32 degrees C – early in the season – brought with it an early fire to the east of Kwara. Because of the little rain that occurred in the previous rainy season, most grass is very dry already, but it is also quite short, making it a little easier to fight the fires. Still, it is early for bushfires, and rumours abound that the rainy season will make its entrance a little earlier this year, perhaps to make up for the dry times last season.