The next day, we found a lioness with the 6 cubs, one of the females probably having gone off with the male we saw. And they had all eaten recently. Even so, the cubs were up for some fun, and raring to go. We followed them through some thick thorny stuff, and then through some long grass where only the thermal camera could see them properly. As they came out onto the grassy plain, the very last vestiges on daylight had disappeared, the moon still had a couple of hours before rising, allowing the whole family to revel in their complete invisibility to distant animals.
With the thermal and the starlight camera, we could clearly see a line of springbok and oryx in the distance, but couldn’t tell whether or not the lion family knew they were there. The cubs were just stalking, walking in different directions, and eventually all five lions were spread out over quite a distance.
After a time, some springbok came closer, holding their heads low to see where they were going against the starry sky, and the lions could hear the springbok feet moving through the grass.
Naturally a cub ran too soon and all the springbok ran for their lives.
The day before yesterday, we found a new family in the North of the valley, three females and a male. We got a very good look at this new group when two of them followed the Bushman and the lawyer’s car back into camp. Two lionesses wandered around the kitchen area sniffing stuff and trying to work out what it all was.
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