Out on Safari: Part I (The Sighting)

Quite a special sunrise we had this morning. I think the objective for today would be to try and find some cats. Maybe pick up some tracks of where the Black Dam Pride might be. Maybe even a leopard or so would be nice. Just stood still there for a second back there. And I could hear some buffalo. Complaining about something. I know where they slept last night. Close to a watering hole so I think we better go and have a look. So it turned out to be quite a hectic morning in terms of tracking. Left those buffalo early this morning trying to figure out where these Black Dam lions are. And I think we are going to get lucky. It looks like they actually smashed a buffalo in the early hours this morning. So I'm just trying to get into position and have a bit of a look. So this is a part of the Black Dam Pride but it also looks like some of the breakaway females might be part of this group over here. I can't really see who's in the thicket over there. Some of the lions are actually sneezing back there. But they must have killed this buffalo during the night. You can actually see how much of the buffalo has been eaten already. They often start with the hindquarters. That's the most tender and softest part of the buffalo. And what she's doing now is she's cutting through the skin of this animal. Using her carnassials, her modified molars. And it actually acts like a scissor type action to cut through the skin. So I've decided to leave those lions. I'm pretty sure they're going to stick around and hang around for the entire day. Bellies are nice and full but there's quite a lot of meat still left on that buffalo. So what I'll do is potentially come back this afternoon when the light improves and get some more pictures and shots of them. It's always so rewarding when you spend an entire morning tracking these animals and you get rewarded with lions on a buffalo kill. But like I said I'm pretty sure they're going to stick around. Lots of food. Also about 100-200 meters away there's a big watering hole. So they'll be good for water and we'll probably see them this afternoon. So as promised, bless you. So as promised from this morning, we did return to the lion kill from this morning. Not too much has changed. They have dragged this buffalo carcass back into the bush. And besides some of the younger males dominating the kill, it's just a couple of females with them and it looks like at least nine members of the black-tailed pride.