Outwitted!

Last night started with some real hope. We located the big male and his two young females again, and they looked pretty hungry. Despite having wasted our time over the last few nights ineptly chasing potential prey, they were now in a great area for filming and hunting.

As night fell, they moved into a perfect position. Then the male stuck his big head up, roared and alerted all the animals to their presence, then the girls started chasing anything that moved. Round and round, backwards and forwards. The oryx were not surprisingly being extra vigilant and pretty much all moved off to somewhere quieter.

This strategy was only going to work if there was at least another lioness present, a strategy that needed a couple of chasers who push the prey towards a couple of catchers. It doesn’t work with just two chasers. But this young inexperienced duo weren’t getting it, and the male who clearly had big expectations wasn’t helping either, just wandering around sticking his big head up at the worst possible times. Eventually they all gave up and settled down for a long sleep.

We were running low on energy and batteries, and decided to return to camp.

Yesterday morning, we discovered to our shock that the trio, who had used up three of our filming nights chasing prey as if they were cubs, had actually brought something down, an oryx, about 3km away from where we left them.

The other lioness and cubs we had been looking for, had also killed an oryx on the road about 15 km to the south. That’s pretty much all of our useful lions used up for at least three days while they digest the 20 or so kilos of meat they’ve each put away.

Chasing Cars - and Oryx

Last night we found our lion family again, they all did their usual pre-move stretch and yawn before moving towards one of the pans, but the cubs were clearly in a mood for some fun, and chased our car as we drove parallel but 100 metres away from the pacing lionesses up the sandy ridge by the pan.

The cubs hunted without purpose and after about an hour and a half of lopeing vaguely towards animals with the effect of frightening them off into the distance, a chance combination of a curious cub walking towards some oryx, and a well placed female and female cub, gave the oryx a good fast chase – and he was lucky to escape - we were so lucky, this is exactly the kind of behaviour we were after.

Since then, we haven’t seen any lions, we've seen aardwolves, cape foxes, leopards, jackals, eagle owls, porcupines and more, fascinating - but not why we’re here.

Let’s hope today the bushman and the lawyer come back with some news of lions.

Found Lionesses - Hurrah!

This morning was the first dry morning for three days, and despite low threatening cloud, we really needed to go out and see what the rain had brought. Practically at the first 'pan'* we saw a large herd of oryx and an even larger herd of springbok. They were frisky and moving west. At the next pan, it was the same story, but this time even more oryx, a few red hartebeeste (an animal that has declined dramatically in numbers) and about 20 giraffe. The next pan, the same story. We must have passed 300 oryx (compared to the 10 or so from before the rain) and 500 springbok. And then, with a massive stroke of luck we glimpsed an ear of a lioness. And she wasn't alone. With her were another adult female and four strapping half grown cubs - exactly what we were looking for...


*In this part of Africa, a 'pan' refers to a low flat grassy area which the grazing animals prefer. During the short Kalahari rains (normally November to January), water collects in these areas carrying nutrients. The animals also like it because the grass is short and they can see if anything is creeping up on them.