BEAUTY OF WILDLIFE: Madikwe - One of Africa's Jewels

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Madikwe - One of Africa's Jewels

The last few weeks the sightings in Madikwe were incredible. All my guests have at least seen 4 out of the the big 5 during there stay. The last 2 groups I had were particularly very lucky. Every day lions were in abundance. The great thing about Madikwe is that we can go off road after these cats, and you can get really close to these magnificent apex predators.

The one animal that we do not see every day is the wild dogs, there are now 21 of them 15 adults and 6 youngsters. This specific morning they were found on one of the main roads, so every safari vehicle was responding , luckily we have radio contact with every body. We control the sightings to only 3 vehicles in a sighting and 3 on standby. But let me tell you vehicle wise it was a nightmare , but at the end it was worth putting on my boxing gloves to get a spot. We sat with them for a while when out of the blue a dazzle of zebra appeared and chased the pups, we all thought yeah who is chasing who now ?

Two of my guests Mitch and Michell missed the evening drive and that morning I thought we are not going to get any lions. But like life throws a curve ball at you there she was all by herself the mica female on a wildebeest kill. Just as new life can be given it can be taken away in a flash, as we saw with this unborn wildebeest. She removed it from his mother and almost as if her mother instincts kicked in she took the calf to a shadier spot, but did not eat the calf. Very strange behaviour.

One morning after our drive I took my guests after breakfast to go and see a pride of 8 lions with 4 cubs. They were laying up at Vlei pan.

When we got there they just killed a wildebeest. Was great to see them eating in the open like that. Was very surprised that they left the carcass out in the open like that. Normally they get the carcass in to cover quite quickly. I suppose it is because the 2 pride males were there that they didn't felt threatened. Every single one ate together even with the two pride males. At one stage one of the cubs were under the belly of the big male. The mother of the cubs is the Mica female. She is also the mother of the Serety males, they are also featuring in previous blogs.