Lions at Chitabe

On Monday, Janette and I went across into the Chitabe area. The water outside of the fence is still rising, but several well-maintained bridges have been built, so that only small patches of water need to be crossed. Further north, the water has started to drop, and the buffalo are using the floodplains more now that the fresh grass has been exposed.

We started off sampling from one of the collared animals that is currently in the very top of the hunting concession bordering on Chitabe. We worked our way northwards along the floodplains, skirting the water, but I could definitely tell that the water is dropping, and relatively quickly. We sampled a total of 24 sites, and were able to access almost all of the points that we tried for.

At one grassland point, Janette came walking swiftly back to the car, as she had spotted a large elephant bull walking aggressively towards us. We got into the car, and he did seem to be fairly upset, and was in must, so we drove away from him to give him plenty of space. He went up to a palm and shook it violently, as if to prove to us that he could do the same to us if we got in his way again, but he then moved off.

Later on, we were driving along the edge of a channel, and came across a pod of hippo. There was a big male that yawned at us and launched himself out of the water, although he did not quite want to make the effort of coming out and charging us fully. We stopped to watch him showing off, but eventually left him to his little patch of water.

We drove off from the hippo pod and a couple of hundred metres later we startled a young male lion lying behind a bush right next to the road. He was with a sub-adult female and an older adult female. We took some photos and drove another kilometre to get to the next point, only to come across two very large male lions relaxing under a tree.

We finished off the last few points, then stopped in at Chitabe on the way out. I am hoping to try to get into the Stanley's area soon, since I have not been able to access the herds there for two months now, but I am not sure that the water has dropped sufficiently before the fence for me to get through.