We started trapping earlier in this year and had a film crew join us for a few days whilst looking for the new southern male and his western counterpart along with the females residing in the males' territories.  We had a great time on the reserve but as luck would have it we did not catch a single leopard whilst they were here.  Things were also relatively quiet on the sightings front although we were fortunate enough to find 4 different leopards in the time they were here.  Typical of the cats as when the film crew left leopards all of a sudden started popping up everywhere and we duly caught two and collared two males.  The southern male (DM3 or Mfula) was the lucky recipient of a new GPS collar sponsored by Vectronics Aerospace and the data we are getting from the collars are already invaluable to the study.  The cat's nickname was decided on as Mfula as it is the Zulu word for "river" where this cat was first seen and also later caught.  GPS data reveals that the Mkuze river is now the official boundary between Mfula and T-Bone's territories with both of them sharing access to the southern female.  The other cat we were surprised to catch on Hlambanyathi was a stock raiding male which shares Hlambanyathi, Jozini Game Ranch and most likely Somkhanda.  This cat has lost a large portion of his right rear foot which could explain his calf killing tendencies.  He was fitted with a VHF collar for preliminary tracking and which will enable us to quickly identify him as the calf killer should another such incident take place.

An interesting thing happened when a night vision camera placed by the film crew overlooking a bait with Vukile and Sinkwe in attendance was stolen, or rather, not where we fastened it when we came back the next morning.  We initially had a good laugh about it and expected the camera to be in close proximity of where we set up.  The tall grass made seeing clear signs very difficult but even after a long search covering a lot of ground around the site the camera was still nowhere to be found.  Us as reserve staff had no idea where to hide our shame as the conclusion we came to was that it must have been poachers.  Apart from feeling that the privacy of the reserve has been violated it also led to someone else's camera getting nicked!  We left a near-regiment size of trackers and APU members in the area, ordering some to first check the nearby perimeter fence for possible entry points and to get an idea of the direction taken if it were poachers.  Several cameras have been stolen on an adjacent reserve in the last few months and it probably the best course of action for poachers to do if they have been photographed.  Being on a limited timeframe we had to carry on with the documentary leaving the searching in the much more capable hands of our trackers.  Lo and behold, a call came in at about midday that the camera had been found in an adjacent drainage line!  This on nearly 8000ha of land.  We rushed to the spot, very inquisitive to find the identity of the "thief" as tracks revealed that the culprit was not human, but a leopard!  Never in 10 years of cameratrapping have we had any interaction of leopards with the camera, and this cat carried the new toy along with her for several hundred meters, stopping every now and then to play with her newly acquired high-tech gadget.  We will never know how the cat did it but it untied a belt buckle which even at the best of days will cause some under-breath grumbling when we remove cameras ourselves.  Not only that but it also managed to open two clips on the side of the camera (how's that for intelligence and if not, then maybe just perseverance!) and probable further roughing it resulted in the memory card falling out.  Aaargh!  Judging by the track size it must have been Sinkwe who "borrowed" the camera for a while and although we retrieved the camera, the footage of what really happened that night is lost to us.  You win some, you lose some but oh so glad to have the camera back!

We were expecting Vukile to give birth around this time but she had not done so yet.  She and T-Bone were found together yesterday afternoon and we were fortunate enough to see several matings, some right in the open and in glorious early morning light.  Unfortunately the during the best sighting they had their backsides turned to us which made for "interesting" photographs.  Frontal or side shots would have been incredible but hey, you win some, you lose some...

We have not had as much rain as we’d hoped and as a result the veld is much drier than the same time last year.  It is unbelievable how warm it still is for this time of year and the heat is also playing a large role in drying out the grass even more.  This has little consequence for the cats but the veld in some areas is getting hammered by herbivores.  Most of the antelope have already lost an expected bit of condition as the dry season sets in and we are looking forward to a successful trapping period.  We also had our first battery change with Vukile’s collar the first one to start broadcasting an emergency beacon.  T-Bone’s bite wounds were infected so we swatted two flies at once by free-darting the cats last week.  It was again an incredible experience to be in such close proximity of animals we see nearly every day.  T-Bone was the first to get darted and less than two hours later Vukile got her new collar.  Who says Christmas only comes once a year?

Vukile seems to have finally cut her ties with her two cubs from last year.  She is due to give birth in a few weeks and the current period will be one of a few ones that she is alone without the responsibility of raising cubs.  We have an idea where Desmond and Sinkwe spend their time but the Tamboti thickets makes finding the cats difficult.  Surely the most interesting happening over the last month was the appearance of a new southern male, and spot pattern comparison shows he originates from a reserve approximately 30km south of Hlambanyathi.  We found T-Bone and the new cat pacing along the river yesterday afternoon and this has probably been our best sighting yet of the parallel walk that dominant males occasionally conduct on the outskirts of their territories.  The river is completely open which seems to accentuate the cats’ sizes.  It is also a huge bonus for a relaxed individual to have moved in, and we could approach to within a few meters of the animals that only had eyes for one another, growling as they walked and stopping every few meters to head rub, scrape and scent mark around prominent bushes on the riverine forest edge.  When we found T-Bone this morning he was heading towards the north probably to try and halt the western male’s advances, leaving the southern male in the riverbed.  This cat continued upstream and caught an impala ram at the fenceline crossing where we’ll be camera trapping tonight to confirm its identity.  We have 3 GPS collars ready for deployment although we now do not know which animals to fit the collars on!  That is a nice problem to have as it indicates a slow but steady growth rate of leopard numbers on the reserve.  Footsnaring resumes on Tuesday and we are aiming at getting at least two but hopefully three cats to aid in our data collection.

We re-released the Hlamabnaythi pack of wild dogs a week ago, after bonding an additional male with the pack.  The dogs have been giving us hours of entertainment following them around during their early morning and late afternoon hunting forays.  We did not expect to have many leopard sightings whilst following the dogs around but we were pleasantly surprised.  The dogs seem to have a knack of sniffing out leopards and we saw 3 wild dog/leopard interactions in the first week of release.  The first sighting happened so quickly that we could not identify the leopard, although we can say with conviction that it was not happy.  The two male dogs were right on the leopard's tail as it came bursting from a thicket and crossed the road in front of us, running at full speed until it eventually found a climbable shrub.  The dogs relaxed slightly and the leopard saw its opening, speeding away into the thickets.  The cat looked like Desmond although he was found 2 days later in the north and far away from the spot where this interaction took place.  We only heard the leopard on the second occasion and it must have been a larger animal as this time it was the dogs' turn to come speeding out the thicket.  Two days later on an early morning patrol we found the dogs close to the river and red pipe crossing excitedly running around the base of a massive dead knobthorn.  In it was Shada's female cub from last year, also independent now and roughly the same age as Sinkwe and Desmond.  She is a beautiful cat and seems to be spending a lot of time around the river in this area.  Being unaccustomed to vehicles she raced away to a tree with more foliage with the dogs hot on her heels.  This time we could approach closer and have a good look at the cat, although she only had eyes for the dogs milling around the base of the tree she was in.  The dogs lost interest after a few minutes and ambled off and the cat shot out the tree the moment we started the engine to leave.  The alpha female gave birth last night in a big aardvark hole in the east and we are hoping to see more interaction between the species.

As far as the cats are concerned, Vukile has been idling her time away in the far north of the reserve, alternating between the Tamboti drainage line and the Soetveld stream with its thickly bushed fever tree forests.  She has not mated for a while suggesting that she could be pregant and should give birth around the 5th of June.  Sinkwe recently moved south towards the lodge area and has been sighted by a couple of people using the main road to and from the lodge.  The area is very thick and the cat needs to be either on or nect to the road if you want to find her.  Every sighting of Desmond is now in the Tamboti drainage line where Vukile heads to every now and again. 

The most concerning development is the rising tensions between T-Bone and the western male.  We were tracking T-Bone this morning but came across the large western male first.  He sat down behind a Euclea shrub and gave us the meanest stare he could.  This is a beautiful male and slightly larger than T-Bone.  We found the latter about 200m on, feeding on a massive warthog boar he recently caught.  The amount of facial scarring suggests that he has been involved in at least 2 fights over the last week or 2, with the western male being the most likely culprit.  T-Bone now has access to at least 5 females in his territory which makes it very high value leopard real estate, and the attempted intrusions of the Thanda male from the south proves this theory even more.  T-Bone had gashes in both cheeks, a lot of fresh scratches across his face, a healing bite mark on his head right across the diagnostic T-shaped spots, as well as a bite wound on the side.  The western male, on the other hand, had no visible scarring whatsoever which can indicate that he is not the culprit or that he is completely dominating the interaction between the two giants.  Perhaps we just found them close the their communal boundary by accident.  The western male's collar is on its way and should be here within the next week, and if all goes well also fitted within the next month.

It looks like the cubs' carefree days are finally over.  Vukile is most likely pregnant with her upcoming third litter and we haven't seen either Sinkwe or Desmond for more than 2 weeks now.  This means that Vukile abandoned them at almost exactly one year of age (362 days).  She made an impala kill in an area close to where she often left her cubs but did not even bother to call them to share in the feast.  Sinkwe's bite marks of a month or so ago were most likely caused by her mother due to Sinkwe also aging and starting to stake her claim to her own territory.  There is also a huge likelihood that the yearlings will injure or even kill newborn cubs so it is high time that Vukile gets rid of her dependent cubs.  The cubs already have the advantages of their permanent teeth and larger size and the next few weeks will be critical to determine their fates.  We are still out everyday to attempt sightings but can not even find a single trace of the youngsters.

Vukile's range use has changed completely and she only spends a small amount of time east of Hlambanyathi dam which is the area the cubs have spent most of their lives in.  Her newly preferred area is once again the fever tree forests lining the Hlambanyathi and Soetveld streams where they enter Hlambanyathi dam.  This is also the area where she has given birth twice before.

The winter season is fast approaching which should mean better sightings of leopards.  T-Bone is still covering a lot of ground, but with the Mkuze river flowing strongly for the last month he has had no access to the southern parts of the reserve.  The river female which utilizes both banks is most likely trapped on the northern bank herself, as we found a set of female tracks wandering past the lodge a few days ago.  With another session of footsnaring coming up we have set several cameratraps in the west and a great collection of images are constantly streaming in, with the western male not lying low in his own territory.  We have photographed him on average every second evening over the last 2 weeks but have not had success with the western females.  The fact that the massive western male spends a lot of time in certain camera trapping areas suggests that a female should be close by and we should get some images before long.  What amazed us was the number of spotted hyena pictures coming through and these are almost photographed on a nightly basis, shuffling along singly, walking in pairs, cautiously eyeing the cameras with heads held high and of course the obligatory bumshots.  The hyenas could prove distracting when we start footsnaring the west in the next couple of weeks as they are also easily caught using footsnares.

It looks as if winter of 2010 will be a good season for predators, but not so good if you are an impala or warthog!  The parallel walks the males conducted was caused by both Vukile and (presumably) the southern female being in season, and each male got his share of the spoils.  T-Bone (the stud that he is...) of course mated with both females and if successful, we should have two new litters of cubs come June.  Vukile spent a full 5 days with the western male, again allowing us great viewing of the large but relatively shy cat.  The mating pair led us along the upper reaches of the Hlambanayathi stream, every now and again offering glimpses of themselves, and on a few occasions crossing open areas in front of us.  The terrain is very difficult to follow leopards in, as the stream banks have many thickets along its course.  During this time, T-Bone was happily mating with the southern female on the banks of Hlambanyathi dam, but the vegetation they chose was even thicker than Vukile and the Western male's area. 

After Vukile's honeymoon period, she was back in her territory and as luck would have it we found her and T-Bone together in an open area.  As the vehicle stopped next to the pair, T-Bone lay down and Vukile cavorted up seductively, making her intentions clear.  T-Bone of course obliged and we had our first view of mating leopards, right out in the open!  Six seconds after the started it was over and Vukile spun around, swiping with bared claws at the male, which jumped nearly 2 meters in the air to steer clear of Vukile's appreciation!  The morning only got better as less than 200m from where they mated, T-Bone caught a young warthog and breakfast was secured.  After a while, Sinkwe no doubt hearing the commotion from a nearby thicket, joined up with the mating (and now feeding) pair and also got her share of the spoils.  The hog was small and did not last long, and after finishing his share, T-Bone stood out in the open and gave the rasping call of an adult territorial male.  Amazingly, Sinkwe joined in and it was the first time that we heard the youngster call.  It demonstrates that she is approaching maturity and the bite marks we found her with last week could easily have been inflicted by her mother.

Not only did the leopards mate, but also the wild dogs and even a pair of cheetahs.  This should be a great winter for predators as all are due to give birth from May to June.  Can't wait to have a look at the newcomers!

We are still in the time of year when sightings are at a minimum due to the tall grass and low levels of daytime activity but that has not stopped us from observing very interesting behaviour.  A first for us was seeing two dominant males together, no doubt having a slight disagreement about where their communal territorial boundary is.  We were out yesterday morning tracking T-Bone and eventually caught up to him in a relatively open tall grass area.  As we were approaching his whereabouts I heard a leopard's low growl coming from the right, and seeing that T-Bone has never growled at the vehicle we decided to first skirt around the edges of the taller grass to get a better idea what was going on.  This paid off as we found T-Bone moving out the thick area, and nose to the ground and with obvious intent he started criss-crossing the immediate area.  This behaviour gave the fact away that there was something more interesting than our vehicle around and we kept 20m behind him, stopping when he stopped to sniff something interesting before heading on again.  Our first predictions were that it was probably a female in attendance but then the western male revealed himself about 30m in front of T-Bone.  They seemed to be busy with a parrallel walk along their communal boundary, although the western male's relative shyness towards vehicles could have interrupted this process.  What was even more incredible was that the western male was a bigger cat than T-Bone!  We followed the two cats at a distance which seemed to have had a calming effect on the shy cat, and after resuming their display the giants finally entered an open area, with T-Bone hot on the heels of the other dominant male.  Even though we could not get any pictures of the scene it must rate as one of the most spectacular things we've seen thus far.

Vukile's remaining two cubs are now close to 11 months of age and are spending less and less time with their mother.  They seem to only socialize when the mother calls them to a kill and will spend a day or 2 around the carcass before heading in their seperate directions again.  Even though this means that we find Vukile alone more often than not, it gives us greater pleasure to come across the uncollared youngsters without the use of telemetry equipment.  The female already has her set of permanent teeth, and the young male is in the process of getting rid of his last milk tooth.  This means that the youngsters now have the tools at their disposal to finally start hunting larger prey for themselves.  We have not seen the female scent mark yet, but the young male is marking as many bushes as he can and it will be interesting to see for how much longer T-Bone will allow his male youngster to remain in this territory.  Once Sinkwe starts scent marking her mother will also most likely chase her out and as another chapter in this young female's life starts, Vukile will probably have given birth to her third litter.

We tried to update our site using quicker internet access - Really!  We started on Tuesday but according the computer it is currently Wednesday so is 3G that much faster than whatever it is that we use back on the Reserve?  At least we added a few pics on our leopard gallery but it will take some time to do them all.  Before we arrived we also did some reading up on leopard females' habits and the way Vukile is behaving it seems that she is quite likely to dump her cubs on their own.  She has been hanging around a Tamboti edged drainage line towards the northern part of her territory, and although she made a few kills she stashed along the thickets she only called in her cubs on one occasion.  It was therefore quite special to be tracking leopards a few days ago, finding 3 cats in individual positions by simply guessing their locations.  We tried it again the day after.  It didn't work.

This morning Vukile was parked underneath a very shady bush and we were lucky to see her but the heat has been close to unbearable, even with the cooling breeze supplied by an open vehicle.  The diversity of insects landing on us has been more of a talking point than anything else!  Who knew that Cicadas came in black, bark and green?  They all sound the same though!  Those were the new species we saw, with the ever-present golden orb web spiders and kite spiders being everywhere. 

Talking about insects, we did a scout around for the Calycomyza flies released as an alien plant control agent for the noxious Chromolaena weed and found quite a few mining sites for the emerging adults.  That by itself is glorious news if only the leopard females knew we are diminishing their den sites!  After the inspection (and a couple of beers) we were lucky enough to find our girl Vukile lying in a not-so-massive Schotia and unintentionally got within a few meters of her.  She has had some bad experiences with the MGGVV (Massive Green Game Viewing Vehicle) but is becoming an amazingly habituated animal.  The change has been sudden, so we cannot wait to see what our winter viewing will be like.

Her latest love interest being the Western male has been taunting us with several sightings and even some excursions into T-Bone's territory whilst the huge male is down south visiting his other girlfriends.  The responsibility that stunning cat has.  [Talking about T-Bone and not his rival here!]

Of course T-Bone has no problem with camouflage and who knows when the last time was that we saw him.  The summer growth is exuberant and any animal capable of concealment can hide itself anywhere.  That was probably the problem the last time we tried to track the big boy as even with a weak receiver his signal was all around but the lush growth prohibited any sighting.  Maybe our failing eyesight has something to do with it (or not) but the bugger was nowhere to be found.  He seems to be having the same problem as us during this time of the year by sleeping late (in leopard terms) before heading out during the late afternoons to kill warthogs, find girlfriends, displace rivals, pee everywhere and do whatever it is that dominant males do whenever humans aren't looking...

Shada has been the greatest quizz of all and we found another of her kills but her shy nature and probable high density of easily catchable prey causes her to effortlessly move anywhere.  We found her tracks again a few days ago and she still uses the sugar cane.  How do you catch a leopard in sugar cane - Honestly?

Apart from the usual supects being Houdini, T-Bone, Vukile, the Western male, Shada, Sinkwe and our latest named cat Desmond (so named because of his 2:2 spot pattern, i.e. Desmond 2:2), the western female and her cubs which are close to dispersing age have not been seen or heard from for a few weeks.  She also uses the neighbouring reserve from time to time so there is a good chance that they are in there now, but Vukile's facial scars from her mating excursion to Doornhoek may prove that the western girl is back. 

Matilda after her winter comeback has not been seen again, although there is a good probability that her last female cub has settled on the reserves flanking us as they had good sightings of a female and cub during 2009.  This female cub (ironically being Vukile's sister but also being nearly the same age as her cubs) will hopefully settle in the area and continue Matilda's legacy of relaxed leopards in Zululand!  Our upcoming camera trapping period will be interesting!

The temperatures have been playing havoc on our well-being, bouncing from ambients of more than 40 degrees C to chilly days where you actually consider putting on a jacket of some sorts.  The grass is very tall in most places and a typical day consists of overcast conditions with humidity close to 80%.  Cicadas are everywhere and their high-pitched chirping combined with the heat and humidity can cause you to go mad.  On the few days the sun comes out it seems as if everything will just melt although the cool breeze blowing on you when driving in an open vehicle is actually very pleasant.  It is the standing still part that seems to get to you.  We have been witness to raging heat, cool drizzle, tropical thunderstorms, pleasantly calm days and one helluva storm a week or so ago.  The high temperatures are affecting the leopards too, and they mostly move around at night whilst choosing to spend the searing days in thickets.  Luckily they are more prone to climb trees during this time of the year so photographic opportunities are plentiful although the light is not always on our side.  Using a spotlight at night adds a lot of colour to the shots and seems to be the best course of action of late.

Vukile is mating again!  This time she by-passed T-Bone and spent the best part of a week with the western male.  Why she chooses to ignore the dominant male in her territory and mate with an outsider, which from our point of view is much smaller than T-Bone remains a mystery.  The western male is reaching his prime and will probably be a massive cat within a year or 2.  The possibility exists that she is trying to con the male into thinking he current (or future) litter is his progeny and it will make it safer for the youngsters growing up in a situation where dominant males will kill cubs that are not their offspring.  With Vukile's territory well outside this male's range it still does not make complete sense but it is a theory at least.  Why she is mating whilst her current litter is only just over 8 months of age also adds fuel to the speculation that she is entering periods of false-oestrus for the males' sakes although this last consortship lasted a whole week.  This is a longer than average mating period and could mean that she really was in oestrus.  She will abandon her cubs should she be close to giving birth and if this mating was successful she should give birth within a 100 days or so.  This again raises questions on whether the cubs are old enough to fend for themselves.  The fact that they were left alone and survived for a week without supervision plus we found a reunited family taking their turns feeding firstly of a common duiker and a day later on a warthog sow should answer the question, but size wise the cubs are still really small and would probably not be a match for any sized impala (bar new-borns) at this stage.  Now that Vukile is paying all this attention to the new male it is quite important to get a collar on him as well to monitor interactions between all the neighbouring cats in that particular area.

T-Bone seems to be a heat sensitive (or lazy) cat as he refuses to move around during daytime.  He is found without exeption in fever tree forests where he'll spend the whole day and only starts moving around from about 7 at night.  We have not seen the bugger for about a month now although we did come close on several occasions.  More intensive follow ups will probably give us a sighting although Vukile and her cubs are really stealing the limelight and in some cases allow us to approach (or approach us!) to within a meter or 2.  Sinkwe is especially inquisitive and will often stalk the vehicle when we encounter the cats.  She had some good hunting lessons yesterday, compliments of a cooperative yellow-billed hornbill.  The brave bird flew in and perched in the very same tree that Sinkwe was lying underneath.  She could not resist and was into the scented thorn in a flash but the bird seems to have played this game before.  Sinkwe had to climb to the topmost tangled braches, dodging vicious thorns whilst still balancing on thin twigs but she was seemingly adamant about a feathered meal.  As she came to within a foot or 2 the hornbill would simply relocate to another branch a few meters away and the cat had to start all over again.  The game continued until the hornbill had had enough and simply flew away, ending her fun and our entertainment.

After being conspicuous throughout the most part of winter, the southern female has not been seen since, although we still encounter her tracks from time to time.  She seems to be moving freely between the reserve and sugar cane plantations, using the same gate we use every morning.  We have a collar for her but will wait a few months for the weather to cool down and prey to become harder to catch before setting up a few baits as attractants.  She is still a very young animal and should stay in the area for a few years to come.

The week started cool and overcast as has been the case for the last few weeks and although the cooler temperatures have been great in terms of comfort, the light conditions were not that great for photography.  We won't complain as the high summer temperatures will probably hit us within the next week or so.  It was in this cool weather that we did our usual morning scan for cat beacons when we picked Vukile's signal up in the far west and miles from her territory.  This was indeed strange and according to GPS data, the first time that she entered this part of the reserve.  The terrain is quite hilly and very difficult to traverse in a large vehicle but we finally got closer to her in the late afternoon. 

The signal came from a hill overlooking the Doornhoek stream but as we drove towards the beacon it was not Vukile who lifted her head and stared at us through the tall grass.  From the size of the head and neck we could clearly see that this was a male, and seconds later he was joined by Vukile who sinuously sneaked around the male and promptly presented herself for mating.  Not being accustomed to vehicles, the big boy wanted nothing to do with this business and sneakily disappeared down the embankment and into the dry Doornhoek stream.  Vukile was probably taken aback by his sudden disinterest and followed suit, keeping a high profile whilst the bigger male was leopard crawling and tried to remain unseen.  He eventually gave up and lay down in a thicket with Vukile following and lying down in a beautiful clearing next to him.  We had a good sighting by then and just sat in the vehicle hoping for Vukile as "bait" to get the tom into the open but her best efforts failed time after time.  Eventually he started growling at this persistant female who wanted nothing else but sex and in the process kept on giving his position away!  Finally he got up and we had a good look at the cat.  He is still relatively young but is starting to show the thicker neck of an adult male.  His ears and face are still unmarked (mostly) and he seems to be slightly smaller than T-Bone and Houdini, yet picture comparisons show that this is the same cat we've photographed on cameratraps several times in the west of the reserve.  How Vukile knew where to find him is beyond us, although T-Bone was at that stage trapped in the south due to the high river levels.

On Tuesday we saw our first impala fawn, although it was firmly lodged in the 3:2 male cub's jaws.  Vukile was back with her cubs after mating with the western male and the youngsters were probably famished by this time.  A small cat fight nearly erupted as Sinkwe tried to edge closer to he brother, who eventually relented and this time it was Sinkwe's turn to snarl at anything coming too close to her and the kill.  For a young cat her growls sound exactly like an adult's and not even the vehicle escaped her "anger".  With the young impala plentiful, hunting should become easier and now will be a very intense training period for the youngsters as Vukile will catch and injure impala fawns for her cubs to finish off.

This morning Vukile surprised us yet again by mating with T-Bone.  He finally overcame his fear of water and headed north again, probably due to Vukile's calling.  The cats were in a thicket and mating every 10 minutes or so.  It was very frustrating to get to within a few meters of the mating pair and almost feeling their growls and mating snarls but not being able to see (or photograph) anything!  We are heading out again this afternoon to hopefully get some footage of mating leopards.  Females with cubs that mate are apparently not an uncommon phenomenon but we can only speculate why.  Vukile should not give birth for the next 10-12 months and is perhaps mating to fool the males into thinking the cubs are theirs.  Such false oestrus periods are apparently commonplace in lions, especially when a pride has been taken over by new males.  Here's holding thumbs that the cats will head into more open areas by tonight.

The recent cooler weather has brought with it several millimeters of rain, and the veld transformed itself nearly overnight.  Areas that were lying dry and barren until a week ago are suddenly flourishing with new life as new grass and wild flowers sprout everywhere, leaving the previously dust covered areas with a new vivid green shine.  You can almost sense the change in the animals and they are already starting to gain a new sheen on their coats with all the rich green grass and newly sprouted leaves available to them.  Although everything is beautiful and green the veld has not nearly reached its full potential, and finding the leopards is still quite easy.  They have been spending a lot of time up trees of late, if not to escape the daytime heat then to keep out of the wet grass, and all the cats have shown relatively localized movements over the last week or so, mostly sticking around kills they have made.

We found another of the southern female's kills on Sunday morning and she left a clear drag mark across the river road that something as myopic as a rhino can follow.  The recently dampened soil made the mark stand out like a sore eye and at the end of those drag marks we found an impala ram concealed under a small bush and covered in grass.  She was nowhere to be seen but probably lying up somewhere in the vicinity.  This kill was in close proximity to Vukile's southern boundary.  Only two small portions of the rump were eaten and there was still a lot of meat left for her.  We set up a few camera traps around the kill and got 30-40 odd shots of her feeding although her cub did not accompany her on this occasion.  The reason for this could be that the small cub is still south of the river and is too small to cross, and the fact that she did not return to the kill on Monday evening could confirm this.  By this morning the vultures were all over the carcass and finished the remains within a very short time.

Vukile was found without exception in one of two places, being alongside the Hlambanyathi stream or in a thicket alongside the bush road.  She made a kill (or more than one) along the Hlambanyathi stream and stayed in the vicinity thereof until long after it was finished.  Her cubs are growing at an incredible rate and are putting more and more pressure on the mother to find them food.  The impala was finished within less than two days, but they stuck around for two days more and their round bellies confirmed that there was more than just the impala around.  The area has several massive knobthorn trees and we had great sightings of the female usually lying up on one of the massive branches with the cubs roaming around the area and just generally at play.

T-Bone confirmed again that the only predictable thing about him is his unpredictability, as after several weeks going by with only a single sighting in the rain, he suddenly popped up everywhere and we found him on several occasions without even tracking him.  He came across Vukile and her cubs on the Hlambanyathi stream double kill and great double sightings of both the big cats in trees were almost guaranteed.  It was such a pleasure to simply drive towards the area and find the cats there, although it was of short duration as Vukile moved her cubs away from the male and southern female.  Although T-Bone is the father of these cubs we have never seen the cubs stick around when he came calling, which we find quite interesting.  From the little female's point of view this should change over the long term, although the 2 young males will not have the going so easy.

The leopards have been offering us superb viewing over the last month, with the cubs more or less completely accustomed to vehicles by now.  Today was only the second time that we have come across Vukile's cubs without her in attendance (and also not in the places she usually leaves them) so this unexpected sightings bode well for future viewing of the youngsters.  Rewind a few days and we've had several failed hunting attempts, many kills and even some peculiar interactions between leopards and other species.  There are currently about 4 places that Vukile uses on a permanent basis to hide her cubs when she goes out hunting.  These are spread out over an area of approximately 200ha and the only thing that makes sightings difficult is the tall grass in some of the areas she frequents.  That means that we have driven past the cats on several occasions without having as much as a glimpse of them.  Last week's overcast weather resulted in a particularly strange interaction between a leopard and a hippopotamus.  Whilst tracking Vukile through thick guarri bush and finally reaching a clearing, we found a massive dark-brown object blocking our way.  This of course turned out to be a hippo bull dozing merrily in his new-found resting site.  A few meters away was a seriously confused leopard staring wide-eyed at this huge lump of lard in her way.  Our initial thoughts were that the hippo was dead and the cat was contemplating scavenging, but after the vehicle started, the collosal animal jumped up with incredible agility and it was the hippo's turn to stare wide eyed at the vehicle and the leopard.  He did not waste a lot of time, probably deciding that discretion is the better part of valour and charged off into the thickets and the perceived safety of a nearby dam. 

We found some interesting kills over the last few weeks and noticed animals taken by the female which she has never done before.  One that took a while to ID was half of a cane-rat's head that she was chewing on.  The head was the only part that remained and was a really nasty looking sight to behold but she tried to gain as much protein from it as possible.  Her luck turned when she caught a yearling wildebeest 3 nights ago (also her first wildebeest) but I was surprised at how quickly the 4 leopards finished it.  By yesterday afternoon there was only the skin and large bones left and Vukile was out hunting again all night.  This morning she was lying in ambush along the Tamboti drainage line, next to a ford that crosses the stream.  This is a ideal ambush site and she should catch something within the next few hours.  Meanwhile, her cubs are starting to explore their surroundings and we found the 2:2 male investigating 2 cheetahs we have in a boma this morning.  The 5 month old cub was peering at the cats through the tall grass and hardly looked at the vehicle parked next to it.  This is the most skittish cub in the litter and we were quite surprised at its nonchalance.  Our biggest worry is that the free-roaming cheetah male returns to the boma area (which he does quite often).  The larger cheetah no doubt poses a serious threat to the little cubs and hopefully they have satisfied their curiosity by now.

T-Bone has turned into a ghost but the warm weather probably plays a large part in this.  During cooler days he'll extend his patrol times to coincide with our tracking times but most of the time he is in fever tree forests by the time we get to him.  He's even been visiting Vukile and her cubs on the odd occasion although we've never seen actual interaction between him and the cubs.  It was a great surprise to find him in the vlei land area after following Vukile's signal there, with her lying a few meters away.

Lastly, we finally photographed the southern female and her young cub.  We've been noticing the tracks over the last few months but have never had a sighting, until the game scouts reported a freshly killed reedbuck at our main southern gate.  She caught the antelope no more than a meter from the gate and even tried to drag it through the gap between gate and support pole into the sugar cane!  Luckily it did not fit and she dragged it north for about 60 meters where she left it in the road and in the shade of a large fever tree.  We got beautiful pictures of the cat over the next 2 nights and have enough spot pattern data to recognize her from most photographs now.  Her tracks were following the new sandy road next to the river this morning, heading back into the deeper part of the south.

As the heading suggests, the leopards have been slaughtering the warthogs this week and we were fortunate enough to again see two of the warthog kills and a single grey duiker kill.  T-Bone laid into a huge boar and it was a massive struggle for the cat to subdue the large hog.  T-Bone did not come off the incident scot-free and gave himself a few more scars on his cheek, as well as a torn nasal septum.  Ouch!  That just looked sore.  At least the injuries seem superficial and he should recover very quickly, although we still wonder why on earth he targets warthogs rather than other animals. 

Vukile has been training her cubs to hunt and we've had several rewarding sightings, almost seeing the cubs twice every day now although they are still relatively skittish during daytime.  We only saw 2 cubs for the last 2 weeks and then yesterday afternoon had a glimpse of the third.  It seems to be very shy and probably kept moving out the way every time the vehicle approached, hence the lack of sightings.  We've got a name for the easily recognizable small female and refer to her as Sinkwe, which is the Zulu name for a bushbaby.  Her large eyes are the reason for this and it is a much more flattering name than monobrow which referred to the perfect straight line of spots between her eyes.  Now that we've had a good look at all three cubs together we realized that the litter could consist out of 2 females and 1 male, and not 2 males and one female as thought previously.  At this point in time it is speculation only, and we are still struggling to see the differences between Sinkwe's siblings.  Their spot patterns are nearly alike, and although one seems much larger than the other, you hardly ever see them together to compare size. 

The cubs' hunting training this last few days consisted of a grey duiker and two warthogs that they had to subdue themselves.  Vukile will only injure the prey to limit damage to the cubs and then let the youngsters take over.  It is probably not the easiest thing for some to witness although it is an integral part of the cubs' learning curve.  From the two kill sightings we had, the cubs dispatched of the duiker although Vukile took over on the warthog kill after the pig managed to chase away two cubs and then attempted to head-butt Vukile.  She had it by the throat in an instant and the pig was dead a minute or so later.  Vukile was on the edge of the Euclea thickets last night and I was worried that she'd head into the fever tree forests again, but luckily she had a change of mind and she and her litter were seen this morning on the main road and heading back east again, thereby increasing her accessibility over the next few days.

The site has been updated and we've added some new pics to our Top Rated gallery.  We've had incredible luck of late with the leopards and also managed to set a new record for individual leopards seen in one day, totaling 6 different animals!  That record was again equalled a few days after so all in all things are not going too bad on the leopard front.  Vukile has finally brought her 3 cubs into more "open" areas and we attempt to locate her every morning and afternoon/early evening, although the cubs are still quite shy of vehicles.  She is in a block of mostly Euclea and Tamboti thickets.  The soft Euclea is easy to drive around, through (and over) but due to its dense foliage you hardly ever get a clear sighting of the cat.  All the noise to get there also tends to scare off the cubs which bound away in their own directions, although patience has rewarded us on two occasions with the cubs starting to pounce on mom when siblings become boring.  Vukile has been out hunting this morning and being in close proximity to the lodge and along one of the major roads, we saw her on 5 different occasions this morning alone.  I nearly drove over her on the last sighting, but she got up, moved to the right and 5 meters further found a very cosy spot, as she spent the next hour sleeping in the tamboti leaf litter.  The trees are shedding their leaves and the thicket floor is littered with millions of tan-coloured dry leaves, interspersed with more open dark patches of soil.  It is the perfect leopard camouflage and their ability to blend into these surroundings are astounding.  What makes it better is that there is hardly any grass growing underneath the tamboti canopy which usually leads to beautiful unobstructed sightings of the cats, i.e good photo opportunities!

Incredibly, T-Bone was not seen for a 15-day stretch!  This after his 2-week dominance and showmanship catching 3 warthogs in front of the vehicle.  During our awake hours he just stuck to the fever tree forests, sometimes venturing out at night but always under cover when we are out and about.  We were tracking him with some guests over the weekend and he was again evading us without even trying.  Eventually we figured out his direction of travel and waited for him in a road next to the Hlambanyathi stream as darkness gathered.  He was in one of the most stunning areas on the reserve, following a dense tree-line next to a more open tall-grass area dotted with fever trees growing along the dry stream bed.  Everyone sat awe-struck as he suddenly appeared in the road as if from nowhere, completely silenced by his sheer size and commanding attitude.  We drove closer to where he crossed, and very obligingly he turned back to face us on the other side of the stream, posing broadside less than 10 meters away.  After what felt like a lifetime, but in all probability lasting only 10 seconds or so, he turned and headed on his way, scent marking a leafy bush on the way.  A few seconds later the call of a dominant male leopard reverberated through the forest and just like that, he was gone.  The perfect end to the perfect game drive.

With winter being well on its way, most of the vegetation is thinning out although Vukile still seems to find the thickest cover available to her.  She is a master at hunting in tall grass and yesterday another impala ewe fell victim to her.  She was on the extremities of her western boundary and in close proximity of the proposed new lodge site in terrain which allows easy access but poor visuals due to the tall, dry winter grass.  We first found her in the early morning heading towards her den site but she stopped short in a grove of tamboti trees where she rested and groomed herself for a long time.  She still had a smear of mud across her head from catching the impala and with the heavy dew in the tall grass she cut quite the bedraggled figure. 

We attempted another follow-up later that afternoon and to our amazement found a spotted hyena lying in close proximity.  Hyenas are seldom heard on Hlambanyathi, never mind seen, and this one was lying down in a clearing in the long grass, barely giving the vehicle any attention.  Vukile was her usual super-camouflaged self and I nearly drove over her before she got up, but only moved a few meters away and continued to snarl at the hyena.  At this point the hyena got up and the two carnivores were glaring at each other from a distance of about 15 meters, neither one wanting to give way.  The sun was rapidly setting and the spotlight came out, but at the first glimpse of a bright light the hyena spun around and created some distance between himself and the vehicle, but came to a halt 40 meters or so away.  This distraction gave Vukile the perfect getaway excuse and she melted into the brown grass without as much as a whisper.  By this time the last afternoon glow has disappeared and the nights can be quite dark without the helping glow of the moon, but no problem - out came the telemetry set and finding her again would be a breeze [or would it...].  Narrowing down her position within 20 meters wasn't hard at all but she was nowhere to be found.  The VHF signal was overpowering and even tuning it out to neighbouring frequencies still pointed to the same thicket.  After half an hour I decided to leave as she obviously did not want to be seen, and by this time the hyena came closer again probably to see what this pathetic human was trying to do when tracking a leopard.  As I reversed down an embankment two eyes high up in a knobthorn tree glowed back at me and there she was, safely with her impala in a tree.  The grass below the tree was completely flattened as I made about four or five circuits around the thicket it stood in.  Zululand leopard harldy ever cache their kills in trees.  It was still there today... [lesson more or less learnt.]

Some friends from EKZNW and EWT came over on Sunday to have a look at the new wild dog pups and we had a great sighting of the 3 week old pups emerging from their den.  These are incredible creatures which suffer mostly from bad PR as a result of ancient folklore depicting them as terrestrial pirhanas.  It seems that there are roughly 300 of them still surviving in the wild in SA, down from close to 600 in 1994.  We sat with the pups until before sunset and leopard were next on the menu.  Vukile was out in the open quite close to the lodge but T-Bone was our priority and we finally picked up a signal from him just as the sun set.  We parked the game viewer on the deck site of the "new lodge" and had a stunning view over the upper reaches of the Hlambanyathi stream with the last golden glow of sunset hugging the skyline to the west.  We were not there for a minute before his rasping call echoed down the drainage line and he was close.  We sat for another few minutes waiting for a second vocalization and again it came, but this time a bit further away.  At least we had a fix on his heading but had to drive back around the way we came and only had a glimpse of him as he purposefully crossed the road and followed a game trial into some thickets.  Drat...  I created expectations of a good leopard sighting and now he chose the worst possible place to traverse through.  We had to drive around the block again and ended up in a herd of about 70 buffalo which wasn't too bad.  T-Bone took his time but eventually showed up, and we followed him over another hill and into a valley, scent marking as he went.  When this guy is on a mission very few things will draw his attention, and he did not even glance around as the vehicle idled behind him for a few hundred meters until we left him to his own devices.  This was the first follow-up in a game viewer and with several guests on the back and he passed with flying colours.

Another belief we have is that leopard males very rarely climb trees, and this is supported by their mid-day GPS locations projected over a high-res aerial photograph.  It seems like all the leopards mostly climb trees during summertime when it is stifling hot, with some females even spending the majority of the mid-day heat in large shady trees.  Imagine my surprise when following the big male for a few meters and watching him head down a drainage line and seeing some warthogs explode from cover.  The last I saw of him was as he headed further out of sight and I thought the sighting was over.  All of a sudden he popped out of the grass and into a large knobthorn tree, this on a cold winter's afternoon and at the time when he is supposed to be at his most active.  I must say that leopard females make this look much easier than the larger males.  There he lay, glancing after the meal that just left him but too lazy to lift his head for a proper look.  What a life!  He posed for a few hundred shots [not all useful] and then decided that the ground was more comfortable.  We left him there, fast asleep with him seemingly in no doubt about where his next meal is coming from.  After all, he saw where the warthogs disappeared to... 

Eish...  The last couple of days/weeks/days/nights/etc./etc...  Feels like we only collared T-Bone the other night, yet we have more than 200 GPS readings on the bugger already, nevermind the collection of activity data gathered.  The cat keeps on exceeding our expectations with his (almost) immediate acceptance of vehicles, since the initial sighting with Vukile until 2 nights ago's sighting with the braggart walking up to the vehile again and urinating against anything seemlingly standing still plus vocalizing several times for good measure, probably just to make sure you have no doubts about who is the 'numzane in the area!  Doing a number 2 under the cover of a Lightforce spotlight must be the pinnacle of confidence but afterwards sleeping in a road culvert a few meters from the bakkie is taking it a bit too far!!  So that's that male covered...  I also found out that pointing a spotlight and a 500mm lens towards a huge male leopard sleeping 10.4m from your vehicle is quite a hands on experience unless your'e an octupus.  We've also found that the bloke's majority of GPS readings are on main roads and that the extra 16km of roads we are currently building or re-establishing  are some of his favourite haunts which is so much easier on follow-up vehicles.  Why on earth are we following leopard females then??

Found Vukile this morning in the same spot as last night, only this time she was with a vervet monkey and all expectations were there for her to bring her cubs to the kill, seeing that she usually hides them (or it) less than 50m from the site.  She did not touch the vervet by 7:00 this morning and after leaving her at 11:30 and going through most of the music on my ipod all I got was a (very) sleepy leopard, a (very) stinky vervet monkey and a (very) gatvol realization about how much Bon Jovi music there was on my ipod...  So much for my youth day expectations...

Some insects actually made for an interesting day as we released our first Calycomyza or Chromolaena leaf mining flies today.  These bugs' larvae are leaf miners who should suppress flowering in the invading alien weed's life cycle although we realized that the leopards really enjoy the cover this weed provides.  Apparently the release of the stem-boring weavil's is only a matter of paperwork and that they should become available soon, which could make entry into the fever-tree forest so much easier, nevermind the control of ankle-high plants. 

Until then we'll have to continue heading after these cats in some thick stuff (thanks for pointing out the continued use of the phrase "thick stuff" Michelle).  Thats why we drive Land Cruisers.

We were supposed to head out again this morning and find some cats but VHF readings from a hill overlooking their territories suggested that the animals were in heavy thickets already and that follow-ups would have been a waste of time.  Luckily it gave me time to update the website and you'll find a profile on T-Bone, the new male under the "Meet the cats" section.  Follow-ups over the last few days have been hugely successful and on most outings we saw two leopards, although the late rains have resulted in the bush being thicker than it normally is this time of year.  Although this is bad for leopard sightings it at least means that the grazers will have sufficient fodder available until the next rainy season. 

Houdini is making the next-door reserve his home and is ranging across the whole area, concentrating in and around the Mhlanganisi stream and its associated drainage lines.  I'm relieved that he settled there and if all goes according to plan, we should lift fences with this reserve within the next year.  There is still an uncollared and relaxed female on this reserve and efforts will increase to collar her soonest.  Houdini's areas of concentrated interest probably overlaps significantly with her range and will make capture easier once we move into that area.

Vukile has been hunting in the north-eastern part of her territory again in an area where she tends to be very successful at hunting.  This area is comprised of mostly open savanna with tall grass and huge Acacia tortilis (Umbrella thorn) trees.  The N2 runs past this area and the high noise factor that originates from the highway probably helps her stalk close to her prey before pouncing.  She still spends the majority of daytime with her cubs and heads out to hunt or feed off a kill in the late afternoon, staying a few hours and heading back to the cubs before daybreak.  The time is approaching now when she will start bringing her cub(s) to kills and we can't wait to see the little buggers.  Although we find her almost every afternoon, the tall grass makes good photographic opportunities difficult and very rare, and we usually sit there until sunset to go after the new male.

T-Bone will spend the daytime resting in thickets and is found almost without exception along drainage lines during the day.  Sometimes we are lucky and he is resting in an accessible patch along these drainage lines and we spent around 90 minutes with him last Thursday.  He was resting next to the Hlambanyathi stream quite close to the proposed new lodge site.  This was the first daytime sighting we've had of the cat and the time spent there without annoying him should only bode well for his future attitude towards vehicles.  He travels huge distances and was found south of the Mkuze river on Sunday.  He was on his routine patrol and we came across him just as he left the river to head into the south.  He crossed a large overgrazed area and the lack of cover probably made him slightly more jittery than usual, although it was great to finally show him to one of my visiting friends.  By Monday he had already made a massive circuit towards the east, turning left along the fenceline and covered the whole northern part of his range before spending the day in the fever tree forests along the Soetveld stream.  We found him moving west again and interecepted him along a game path leading west.  Incidentally, this was the same path Houdini followed on a regular basis and after he crossed the road we headed for another interception point on the main road and did not have to wait 10 minutes before he appeared again from the thickets, and then sat down to have a long hard look at the vehicle before crossing the road to the barking of nyalas and excited alarm calls of vervet monkeys.  Chap said that this was the most beautiful leopard he ever darted and it seems like apart from his looks and size, he is turning into a great animal for viewing as well.

We resumed trapping with Simpson throwers on Monday and were astounded by the success we achieved.  Dairen Simpson and Will Fox joined us on the reserve but as a result of road maintenance between Lydenburg and Mkuze they only arrived late Monday afternoon after an 8 hour trip!  As a result we could only install two sets of footsnares as evening came and these were set up close to one another in an area where camera trapping has shown recent high leopard activity.  The midnight check-up came up empty but we picked up some pointers on clothing ourselves with thick layers as the winter chill is well and truly here.  We were out again before sunrise on Tuesday morning (just as cold!) and the first set came up empty. 

The sun was just peeking over the horizon when we arrived at the second set and we could immediately see that the carefully packed brush has been messed around.  Dairen walked up to the set to investigate and was about to look down the entrance when a furious bundle of yellow and black came hurtling through the brush barrier, snarling all the way.  Wow, these cats are quick!  The footsnare and shock absorber stopped the cat, which immediately turned tail and headed to the rear-end of the set, crouching in thick cover and growling at us.  I did not expect to have first night success and the identity of the cat eluded us as it has never been seen.  We concluded that it was either a sub-adult male or female although the fact that it was in the centre of Vukile's territory diminshed the chances of it being female.  Chap came in after us and within a few seconds the cat was darted and Chap was back with us, waiting for the drugs to take effect.  It turned out to be a young male that has never been seen or photographed in camera traps and still being young we decided on release without fitment of a collar.  We used a cocktail of drugs which not only puts the cat to "sleep" but also wipes short term memory.  The leopard therefore have no recollection of the event that took place. 

The rest of Tuesday was spent setting up an additional four sets further towards the west where we've photographed the western male and where another female is residing.  This is the same female we saw on game count last year August.  Whilst heading back to the lodge we checked on Vukile's VHF direction and found her to be heading towards the first 2 sets.  Chap did a 21:00 checkup on those sets and as luck would have it, Vukile was sitting in the trap, looking confused but still relaxed.  She had to be removed through darting but a quick reversal saw her back on her way by 22:00.  All other sets came up empty without even hyenas or bushpigs investigating them. 

Wednesday came up just as quiet and the lack of dominant males' signs as well as sleep deprevation was getting to us.  These sets were put up along roads with high leopard activity but these buggers were just not showing themselves.  An additional set was put up in an overlooked area where scouts regularly pick up leopard tracks.  Incredibly, they came across the western female's tracks with 3 cubs in tow!  These are undoubtedly the results of August's mating so we'll set up more camera traps in that area shortly.  It was decided not to trap that area too intensively for fear of catching a 6 month old cub.  It would be a nightmare to remove the cub whilst an angry mother is in the area.  Wednesday night's check-ups again resulted in nothing and we were glad to get our cold bodies back into a warm bed as we awaited the early morning outing.

Thursday morning turned out to be interesting, and the first four sets we visited were all visited by spotted hyenas, although they did not enter any of the sets.  This could indicate previous bad memories resulting from man-made objects.  We were heading back, accepting another empty morning when my phone rang.  Chap just said that he'd meet us at the second set as there was a large male in the first trap set up.  That was the best news I had all week and I couldn't wait for us to get a dart into him.  We turned the bend and there he was - lying in short grass and glaring at us without any indication of fear, his ears pricked forward and his tail-tip slowly ticking from side to side.  He hardly reacted to the dart hitting him on the rump and only gave a short gruff growl and moving a few feet away.  We backed away and waited the ten-odd minutes for the drug to take effect, everyone babbling excitedly and at the same time.  It was undoubtedly the eastern male and he was magnificent.  We fitted a GPS collar around his 63cm neck which supports his even more massive head, took a few more measurements and injected him with the antidote.  He was up within a few minutes and headed away from the site to nurse his hangover.  A couple of suggestions were made as a name for the cat, including Outspan (SA citrus marketers), Mazoe (the largest citrus estate in Zimbabwe) and Oros (an orange-flavoured drink).  Just imagine two oranges next to each other and you'll get the idea.  The diagnostic T-shaped spots above his right eye were probably a more suitable and above-the-belt feature.  Will's suggestion of T-Bone was decided on as a name.  He is a magnificent cat and one of the biggest we've seen, weighing in at an estimated 80kg!  We'll put up a page for him quite soon but right now, our beds are calling us.

We will start footsnaring again today and have GPS collars for a male and female ready to be deployed.  Our target is first of all the eastern male which now occupies Houdini's former territory.  Incredibly, we saw him twice last week and have also picked him up in several camera traps.  The security guards have been keeping their eyes on the ground and have recorded the locations of all signs of leopards over the last week and all this data were added to the data gathered through the GPS collars.  It fits like a hand in a glove when compared with kernel home range analyses of the other collars' movement data and have indicated two hot spots where trapping should have a higher chance of succeeding.  Anyway, back to the eastern male - we were doing a nocturnal follow-up on Vukile and to our surprise the leopard that filled the beam of the spotlight was not her.  He offered us a very good sighting as long as we kept our distance, but became slightly more nervous as we aproached closer.  Vukile's relaxed presence definitely aided the quality of the sighting and we finally got some pictures of the right hand side of this magnificent male.  All images (bar one very bad pic) of him has been of his left side!  Two days later we found his tracks again the evening after a heavy and unexpected storm and had another glimpse of him following the Hlambanyathi stream towards the main dam.  This was a very quick sighting though, as he disappeared into the thick growth along the stream's edge.  Vukile's cubs are around 40 days of age now, and the time is coming closer when she will start leading them to her kills.  We just can't wait to catch our first glimpse of the young ones.

Sightings of the cats have been very difficult of late with Vukile spending a lot of time with her cubs.  The few sightings we had though were awesome and they mostly consisted of following her whilst hunting or returning to her cubs.  Her hunting areas are far from where she dens with the litter and incredibly she made 5 kills in the first 5 weeks in an area of not more than 10ha!  The kills consisted out of 4 impala and one rather large kudu calf.  As she still tends to visit her kills during daytime and head back to her cubs at night, the few late afternoon sightings have been superb and at stages we followed her back to the den site over distances exceeding two kilometers.  She tends to be less shy at night and will stay about 20m in front of the vehicle, scent marking as she heads back.  Most of the time, however, she'll be with her cubs and we have no way of getting any closer in the thick stuff she's hiding in.  We realized yesterday that she is not conditioned to a game viewer at all as I called in a sighting of her resting on a small mound of dirt.  She was completely at ease with my vehicle and slept like a log for the 30 minutes or so that I spent there.  As the game viewer approached she bolted into some thick stuff and stayed hidden, but promptly re-appeared 10 seconds after the other vehicle left.  We'll definitely have to increase the number of times we follow up in other vehicles.

Houdini is finally back on Soetveld after spending a lot of time in two neighbouring reserves.  We had a quick glimpse of him this morning but he disappeared into a fever tree forest as we approached.  We are also getting more and more sightings of the two new males that have moved into Hlambanyathi and Doornhoek and if all goes well at least one of them will get a GPS collar within the next few months.

We have decided to move the camera traps more east as our trapping success rate in the mountains was awful to say the least.  It paid off as the cameras were only up one night and we got a beautiful pic of a completely unknown cat.  It looks like a male and looking at the way he walked with his ears pulled back he did not seem in a very happy mood.  We tried spot pattern comparison with 4 other leopards that are known to use (and used) the area and can not find any similarity between photographed cats.  What makes it more interesting is that this male was photographed about 500m from where Vukile is hiding her cubs.  We hope that they are still OK.  Vukile is still in the thick stuff after catching another impala a long distance away from her cubs.  She should move them quite soon and hopefully this will be to a more accessible area.

Or so we think...  Vukile headed into thick Chromolaena thickets on the 30th of March in the exact spot where she gave birth last winter.  We did not want to jump the gun by making early conclusions and she moved out of the thicket 4 days later.  We found her close to the red dam and judging by her condition she was hungry - that eliminated the possibility that she spent all her time on a kill in the fever tree forests.  She was in a very cooperative mood as we nearly drove over her lying on the side of a thick patch of grass.  Although looking hungry, she was in no rush and lounged around the area for quite a while before heading off into the tamboti thickets that grow along the stream exiting the red dam.  The following morning we found her not far away from the previous afternoon's sighting, resting in a big Acacia tortilis specimen and the smell of a kill was thick in the air.  After driving forward a couple of meters realization dawned on why the kill smelled so strong - we drove over her impala kill hidden in the tall grass and there were guts and stomach content everywhere!  Oops.  By this time she had already got out the tree and was lying at its base, looking very content with herself and this is where we left her after fifteen or so minutes.  Her GPS locations over the last few days have shown how she traveled in between the kill and her den site at least 6 times over the distance of about 1.4km.  She was feeding on the kill again last night with the last GPS location at 02:00 this morning but was back with her litter by 06:00.  This seems to be the pattern that females with litters have shown by spending daylight hours with their cubs and hunting or feeding at night.  She'll probably only bring the cubs out into more open areas within 3 months and the area she is currently in is completely inaccessible to vehicles. 

We were contacted on Sunday by EKZNW staff notifying us that 2 wild dogs will be temporarily housed in our bomas and that additional animals will be sourced to establish a new pack on Hlambanyathi.  What made it even better was that the dogs will arrive the next day!  The male has tried to enter Hlambanyathi once and his brother was run over by a truck on the N2 highway.  The male finally met up with a female and formed the alpha pair of the Mkhuze pack.  We'll be keeping the male and bonding him with another male, before introducing females at a later stage, thereby establishing a new wild dog pack in SA!  We can't wait for the day that they'll be running free again in the area.

Vukile has entered the fever tree forests and has spent the last 2 days in very thick stuff, quite close to where she gave birth last year.  She has not made any movements out of the area and we are holding thumbs that she gave birth again, although we'll probably find out within the next week or so.  The foliage is so thick that we are only getting about 20% of GPS readings which is very frustrating.  Sightings of her has been near impossible of late with the tall grass obscuring any views, though its good to know that she's close by.

Last week Friday we found a drag mark across the main Doornhoek road and followed up on what was presumed a leopard kill.  It was quite a large zebra foal and camera traps were set upi around the kill.  We got a few shots and spot pattern comparison shows that it is the new male that was first photographed a few weeks earlier.  He spent 4 days on the kill and we found his tracks in a dusty backroad this morning, leading towards the dam, and judging by the track size he is quite the giant (or has very large feet...)

The veld is looking beautiful after the rain we received and the Panicum is standing up to 2m tall in some places.  Things are looking good for the coming winter and the available grazing should pull the majority of herbivores through the drier times.  All this thick grass makes cat sightings nearly impossible though and I nearly drove over Vukile last week when following up on her and a kill.  The tall grass seems to be making hunting much easier for her, and her home range has expanded by about 30% over the last few months.  The tall grass does not always favour the predator though as we saw last week when she burst out of the grass after a warthog piglet.  The piglet simply headed into the thick stuff and Vukile was left bouncing after him like a serval hunting mice.  Night time follow-ups seem to be the way to go at this time of year as the cats mainly use the roads on their nightly patrols.  We finally found Vukile in an open patch in a grove of tamboti trees this morning and what a spectacular sighting this was after only seeing ears in long grass for the last few weeks.  She is as round as a ball after a kill she made close to the lodge and was lounging around in the cool protective cover offered by the trees.  The flies were a constant irritation and she lay there, snapping and pawing at them but to no avail.  It seemed like she just wanted some rest and took up all sorts of positions, once even rolling on to her back and sleeping in that position.  This offered us a good opportunity to look at her nipples which were proudly showing through the white belly fur, but no suckling has been taking place on them.  According to our calculations she should have had cubs by now.  Her full belly is confusing us but we are still holding thumbs.

We finally got the new male on a camera trap in the south-western corner of the reserve.  He is a big brute and was very well fed at the time, therefore showing little interest in the bait we hung, only having three mouthfuls and leaving again.  We are getting many shots of all sorts of animals and had a few laughs at the curious animals having a look right up against the lens, only to run away after a flash fires in their faces.  We are covering four likely spots in the west where another female leopard is believed to have a territory, although we believe camera and baiting success will increase as we move towards winter.

We have been busy with intensive follow-ups on Vukile after seeing some strange behaviour on her part which made us suspect that she was close to giving birth.  Apart from all the stomach growling we heard coming from her, a series of convulsions then started in her lower abdomen.  These convulsions lasted about 2 or 3 seconds each and carried on for about 20 seconds. This was accopanied by salivating, closed eyes and a half-open mouth.  The following morning Vukile was in dense thickets where she spent most of the night according to her GPS data and we even saw something hanging out from her backsde which could have been anything from a gel-like substance to possibly remnants of afterbirth.  However, she has not been back to that spot since that evening.  We later came across a picture showing a cheetah scent marking with faeces and urine at the same time which looks very similar to what we saw with Vukile.  This apparent rare occurence does not explain her convulsions and we hope that it had nothing to do with an abortion or still-born cubs.  This occurrence coincided with a period we were not at home following the cats and she could have mated without our knowledge.  Hopefully if all goes well she should still give birth within 2 weeks' time and what we saw was nothing more than an upset stomach.  We've finally had some decent rain which makes follow-ups impossible but this is great for veld.  The river came down and none of us can remember the last time we've seen the river this full.  It overflowed its false bank for the first time in years and was an incredibly impressive sight.

Houdini is still on the neighbouring reserve and occupies an area of a few hundred hectares.  He is literally boxed in by the presence of other males from his northern, western and southern boundaries.  To his east is the N2 and railway line with the Jozini dam directly behind that so heading that way is not an option.  He is such a huge cat and it does not make sense that the others are dominating him to such an extent.  Within a year he should be even bigger and will probably start the fight to reclaim his former range.

The uncollared cats have been quiet, and apart from the western female's tracks we haven't seen anything from their side.  The lush growth has a lot to do with this as the cats can be 2 meters from a vehicle but still be out of sight. 

A new coalition of two cheetah males arrived last week.  They are still in the temporary holding boma and will be released within a few months.  We can't wait to have them roaming around the reserve.  Vukile nearly joined us for the occasion and was lounging in a large Acacia tortilis not 400m from where we released the cheetahs.  Our new camera traps should arrive today and be set up by tomorrow evening so we can finally start getting better quality shots of the uncollared cats.  This is mostly to insure that we do not fit a GPS collar on an animal which only crosses over the reserve temporarily.  The collars are painted and ready for deployment as soon as we get a resident on a bait.

As expected, the summer temperatures and humidity have reached a peak after the turn of the new year.  Although humidity is close to 80% every day, rain still seems to elude us and some older folk have even refer to the current cycle as a green drought.  Unbelievably, weather forecasts have been amazingly inaccurate [;-)].  We thankfully received close to 60mm of rain over the last two weeks which at least coloured the short grass areas green and supplied most grazing animals with better quality fodder.  We'll still have to wait and see what obstacles the dry winter season will throw at us. 

Vukile was not far from the lodge last Sunday (on a stupefyingly hot and humid day) and we took our vet and his first-born to have a sneak peek at the cat.  She was lying in the deep shade of a grove of tamboti trees trying to escape the heat and humidity we braved ourselves in.  We stopped about 10m from her in the game viewer but her relative intolerance towards the open vehicle caused her to leave after a couple of minutes, probably to seek quieter resting areas.  As we drove off to leave her in peace (and find some peace and shade for ourselves) young Huntleigh noticed a terrapin crossing the road.  It is not uncommon for terrapins to be out and about on humid days after rain and we often find them in similar circumstances moving between rivers, dams and pans.  Nevertheless, we arrived back at camp after "tracking leopards" [a supposedly big thing for a 5 year old] and seeing his mother walk around in the garden he shouted at her: "Guess what we saw mom?... - (masterfully leaving a 4 second pause for extra dramatic effect)  - A terrapin!!".  Wow.  He even had me hanging on his lips for a while...

As a result, Vukile probably felt offended not being the star of the show and the next day promptly moved to the western extremity of her range where we came across her attempting a hunt.  She was using the Soetveld stream and its surrounding thicker cover to get closer to a nyala female and fawn, but the vervet monkeys sitting in the trees noticed her long before either us or the nyalas did.  The monkeys bristled with fury at the cat boldly attempting a daytime hunt and their cheeky alarm calls echoed through the fever tree forest.  We were expecting to see a kill at any second but Vukile made the mistake of focusing  too much on her targets and stumbled across some crested francolins foraging on the forest floor.  All of a sudden their repetitive shrieking joined the monkeys' cacaphony from above and the nyala had had enough, burst from their thick cover and crossed the road towards areas with a [hopefully] lower leopard density.  Vukile melted away into the forest and disappeared without us even getting a glimpse of her. 

We located her the following day [not very far from the weekend's terrapin sighting] but in very thick Euclea thickets.  She was slowly making her way through the thickets but kept out of sight.  It was not long before a few nyalas spotted her and gave her position away through their dog-like barks.  We finally got a fix on her heading and waited on a road, hoping for her to cross in front of us.  A few seconds later she darted across the road, nearly leaving doubt in our minds whether she crossed at all.  Although we were expecting it,  she appeared out of a  thicket and noiselessly crossed the road not 10 meters from us, again just as quietly melting away into the bush.  We drove past her twice before seeing her sitting right next to the road, most likely anthropomorphically wondering how the hell these nearly blind humans became the dominant species on the planet.  Displaying her hunting aptitude, she caught a nyala fawn not 30 meters from where she crossed the road.  The next morning she was still lying close to her kill, sleeping as only well fed leopards can.  

The 'new' male leopard has been quite active since annexing Houdini's territory.  This cat was seen twice over the last 3 days, and has apparently grown so bold that he was seen resting on the main road this afternoon.  He allowed a proper sighting before getting up and moving deeper into Vukile's territory.  Poor Houdini is marginalized through his presence, even though we expect the so called new male to be his sire.  Apparently it is one of those males whose heads seem to be joined directly to their shoulders as a result of their thick necks.  Eish.  And we thought Houdini was big.

We received 2 different reports about a female with 3 cubs seen outside the reserve and utilizing the Mkuze riverine area and neighbouring cane plantations between Hlambanyathi and the Lebombo nature reserve.  This was an area frequented by Houdini and could explain his prior engagements outside the reserve boundaries.

We expected to find Vukile on her kill daily but again she proved us wrong.  She stayed on her kill for about 2 days, finishing a huge portion of it but her life became slightly more interesting when an unknown female arrived last week Thursday.  I was out on an early morning drive hoping to find Vukile on her kill again but was surprised to find a fix on her direction which was far further east than expected.  I followed this signal down a road leading towards the river when a leopard female suddenly bolted across the road in front of me.  This is not typical Vukile behaviour but anything is possible, and I slowly crept forward with the vehicle to the spot where she disappeared into some relatively thick sickle bush.  I switched on the VHF receiver but was again surprised to find the strongest signal coming from behind me.  I reversed back up the road and found Vukile sitting next to it, looking absolutely furious (I think).  She was scraping up tufts of grass and spray-urinating against the larger trees, going about her business with clear intent.  She barely gave the vehicle a glance and set off determinedly in the direction the other female followed, spray urinating against the larger trees and bushes as she went.  I tried the best I could to follow but the thick bush made it impossible, so I drove around the block of thick stuff and waited for her in a road running perpendicular to her direction.  A few minutes later I got a quick glance of her as she crossed but even after driving to the spot I could not find her again.  Later that afternoon we found her a kilometer or so to the east, resting in the shade of a large marula tree.  It was still unbearably hot and she only had eyes for the slight shadow cast by the tree.  After about an hour of rest and with darkness approaching she got up and continued on her way east, investigating bushes and still scent marking.  We had to rush as she was not taking her time and followed her right up to the lodge with beautiful golden light all around. 

Whilst Vukile was busy chasing away the newcomer, the new male took over at her kill and finished most of it.  We tried several times to see him but at the approach of the vehicle whether in day or night time he'd just drop out of the tree and disappear as only leopards can.  It seems that he has finally displaced Houdini as he is not spending more and more time outside of his former clearly defined range.  At this moment we do not have the faintest idea of where Houdini (or our expensive collar) is.  We still check for his signal every day and should pick up something if we are lucky enough to coincidentally track him whilst he is in a tree or on a hill.

Vukile was successfully tracked down from a game viewer for the first time on Friday afternoon's drive.  We found her around about sunset perched on the red dam's wall.  There were some buffalo wallowing in the thick red mud and one of the cows had a brand new calf with her.  Vukile was eyeing this wobbly-kneed infant but luckily did not decide to act on this impulse, although she did throw a couple of long-eyed looks at the snack.  All the other times we followed Vukile with the game viewer she would run away or try and hide in very thick stuff.  We still do not want to approach too close in an open vehicle and initially viewed her from 40 or so meters away.  She showed no aggression or fear and we slowly moved closer to about 15 meters.  She again amazed us by her relatively relaxed attitude towards vehicles, especially considering that before intensive follow-ups started she was only once or twice seen as a cub with Matilda, and that she is already three years old this month.

We attempted to dart Caroline this morning to finally fit her new GPS collar but she would have nothing of it.  Maybe there is some truth in the cats recognizing vehicles (even think about Vukile's prior negative reaction to a game viewer compared to her relaxed attitude towards the tan-coloured land cruiser in which follow-ups are usually conducted).  Caroline made some clever twists and turns that had us scratching our heads several times.  She would just duck into tall grass and tracking had to start all over again.  After several attempts we decided to give up as we were clearly bothering her and did not want to cause an injury to her or provoke a charge (i.e. cause ourselves an injury!).  Unbelievably, when I later drove by in my vehicle she was again as relaxed as she always is.

Vukile was right on her western boundary and nearly caught a nyala right in front of us.  We were holding thumbs but probably could not expect two kills in seven days.  After the attempted hunt she lay down on the edge of the fever tree forest for some sleep.  I slowly crept closer with the vehicle but stopped each time she lifted her head.  After putting down her head again I would start up after a minute or so and again creep closer.  We had to be more cautious than usual as the only angle to get closer was driving directly at the cat which can even make relaxed animals move away.  After 15 minutes we were close enough to get more than full frame shots with a large lens but there were annoying little grass stalks in the way.  The thought of how the goal posts have shifted over the last few years made me chuckle out loud.  This was incidentally the first place where we found Vukile's mother Matilda.  That day Matilda was just as relaxed as the cat now lying next to the vehicle.  The chuckle made Vukile look up at me and suddenly reality came back.  I muttered a quick "sorry girl" underneath my breath and sat back and enjoyed the sighting of the magnificent cat.

We found Vukile in a thickly wooded area and judging from her behaviour she was hunting.  We followed about 20 meters behind but frequently lost sight of her as she moved from thicket to thicket, and suddenly re-appearing again out of nowhere.  After following a kilometer or so she decided to take a rest from hunting and we sat right next to her in the vehicle for about 45 mins while she snoozed.  She is still not oblivious of vehicles but strangely enough allowed me to drive the vehicle right up to her.  The summer heat and humidity is sky-high at this time of year and the 45 minutes spent sitting still meant buckets of sweat for us.  Eventually she got up and headed to a nearby marula tree, no doubt to escape some of the heat and catch a cooler breeze.  Surprisingly, she climbed onto one of the lowest thick branches and stared intently downwards, not even glancing in the direction of the following vehicle.  After about 2 minutes of this she climbed out the marula and headed to another large one nearby.  On inspection we discovered a warthog burrow which opens up towards the stem of the first marula tree, and her vantage point gave her a bird's eye view of the hole directly underneath her.  Judging by the collection of flies that swarmed out of the hole when we drove past, this is a very active burrow and it is probably not the first time that she has laid in ambush on the thick branch just waiting for some unsuspecting warthog to stick its head out.  By this time we were back on her trial but she was only in the second marula tree for a couple of seconds before climbing down again.  In the short period it took us to head to the tree she managed to pull down an impala ram and was throttling the still-kicking animal upon our arrival.  Finally, after 6 months of almost daily follow-ups we managed to see a kill, o at least be close by.  This was obviously also the first time we were with her in the presence of her kill and she was not too happy about the vehicle's proximity, so I backed off to about 20 meters from where we sat and watched her choke the impala until its struggles became weaker and weaker.  This was kill executed with great skill as the impala (most likely a loner) did not even see her or sound any alarm calls which could have brought in scavengers like hyenas.  Nevertheless, Vukile was scanning the horizon for any would-be chancers looking for an easy meal.  We left her enjoy her meal in peace expecting that the next few days sightings shouldn't be too difficult.

Houdini's movements have been keeping us guessing over the last week and are still totally random with little affiliation to his former movement patterns.  It seems that he has had enough of the river outside of the reserve boundaries and is now concentrating along the Hlambanyathi stream on the western side of the reserve.  He even ventured out into Soetveld which is an adjacent farm that we'll be opening up with soon.  This is the first time that we know of him being there, and he spent at least a week getting to know the area.  We've had some good fortune following up on him and have even seen him during daylight for the first time ever.  His activity patterns exclude any daytime movement, so for us this was quite a feat as we not only found him once, but three times during the last week.  It seems that our theory is holding true that the larger western male (which could be his father) was attracted by the higher concentration of females in the east and it almost seems as if the two males swapped territories, although it is more likely the western male grudingly tolerating Houdini in what is now his territory.

Vukile has been her old self and traverses right across her territory, sometimes making movements of up to 2 kilometers a day.  I've had great luck with finding her although she always seems to hide away when someone else accompanies me!  A few days ago I found her in great light, just lounging around, but did not take the camera along that day.  The camera hasn't left my side since but she's been sticking to the thick stuff since then.  We've had some light rain falling for the last 3 days so we haven't done any foolow-ups on the cats, as driving through the wet veld can cause lasting damage, but I'll head out this afternoon to see what our cats are up to.

Today's temperature and humidity was stupidly high, period.  We had a couple of millimeters of rain last night but this morning's clear skies resulted in not only baking heat but also loaded moisture concentrations due to the evaporating water.  Vukile chose a shaded tamboti thicket for her day's resting place.  All the new leaves have long since turned from their reddish young colours to a deep shade of green, and the grass sward did not waste any time in returning to its usual summer lushness.  The thicket she lay up in was surrounded by more open areas with scattered clumps of umbrella thorn and sickle bush and we found no less than five other animal species within less than 50m of her resting place.  Three young nyala bulls were grazing on the new grass, blissfully unaware of the nearby potential danger, whilst a lone blue wildebeest bull challenged us as intruders into his painstakingly measured territory.  His bravado did not last very long and after a few seconds he galloped away, snorting, bucking and jerking his head around, no doubt looking for some slightly more cooperative object to chase around.  The seemingly ever-present warthogs were digging alongside the nyalas, uprooting more grass than they can eat and two rhinos appeared out of the sicklebush, seemingly heading to the dam to spend the heat wallowing in the thick cooling mud.  As if mother nature intended a pun of some sorts, a leopard tortoise was heading towards the thicket than Vukile was occupying but her attention was focused on the vehicle.  Our first sighting was a glimpse of intense yellow-green eyes glaring at us from the undergrowth, no more than ten meters away; that is until we realized that she was staring at us from a clearing in the thicket but her superbly camouflaging rosettes made her nearly invisible in the dappled shade of the thicket.  We probably interfered on a hunt as the moment she lifted her head to look at us she was spotted by the nyalas and after a few barks the only other animal left in the vicinity was the leopard tortoise.  She moved back into the thicket to find some shade but she was obviously not too cheered up by our presence.  We left her in peace and decided to head back to her location in the afternoon. 

By 17:00 in the afternoon there was a heavy build-up of clouds altough the temperature and humidity was still soaring.  It took some careful driving to get close to her and driving towards a relatively unknown cat in an semi-open vehicle surrounded by thick summer growth is not the most stress-free thing to do.  There is no doubt that she knew where we were long before we saw her, and this time she surprised us as we drove past a thicket and found her resting in a clearing.  This time she did not even get up and just lay on her side (9.9 meters away according to the video camera's manual focus adjustment).  We've approached closer several times before, although she was always in very thick bush on those occasions.  Today was the first time we had a great sighting of her in an open area.  We sat there for about 15 minutes before leaving her in peace and it was great to finally leave the cat on our own peaceful terms, rather than letting the animal believe it escaped some form of persecution by slinking away.  More similar sightings should speed up the habituation process and we are hoping to get some great footage of her around and after the time that she is due to give birth should her two weeks' ago mating be successful.

The influence of the new male's presence on Houdini's movements are more far reaching than we initially anticipated.  Houdini spends most of his time tucked away in some far corner of the reserve, whilst the new male no doubt patrols Houdini's former territory.  I am at a loss of what to do, as there is a good chance that Houdini will be pushed so far out that he'll end up a few kilometers from the reserve and the data then gathered on his movements would be of no use to the project.  The ideal scenario would be to get a GPS collar on the new male ASAP so we'll try and at least get him onto baits in the coming new year.

Vukile made a kill a few days ago and was invariably found in the near vicinity of the kill.  It is a flat area with large marula trees sprinkled amongst thickly encroached sickle bush of up to 1.5m tall.  This habitat is ideally suited for her evasive tactics and she can stay out of sight by simply keeping about 30m from the vehicle.  She never runs away but just prefers not to be seen and following her through that thick stuff results in sporadic sightings through the sickle bush, with her stopping every so often to give the vehicle a long hard stare as if to say:"Why on earth are you following me?".  After a couple of hundred meters she'll find a shady spot where she lies down and you can then approach to 10m or so, until she's had enough and gets up to continue her seemingly aimless wanderings.  I do not know how much intelligence these cats have but I followed her for about 500m through this thick bush when we finally came to a clearing.  She crossed the clearing in plain sight without attempting to hide and exited via a game path leading in between 2 clumps of sickle bush.  I gave her 30 seconds or so and drove closer again to reach another smaller clearing and suddenly there was no sign of the cat in the game trial she's been following all morning.  The VHF antenna came out and we found that she made a 180 degree turn after exiting the thicket and was slowly strolling back in the direction of her kill.  Without the telemetry equipment I would definitely have lost her completely.  Vukile has been quite active over the last few weeks, and we are nearing a success rate of 95% sightings in all follow-ups. 

It seems like the battle of territories between the males has shifted in favour of the western male, with Houdini spending more time outside than inside the reserve nowadays.  I was vey happy to find him back inside again this morning, but he was in very dense thickets on the northern boundary.  Vukile is in close proximity but further downstream in the fever tree forests aligning the Soetveld stream.  We have had super sightings of her the last 7 times we went out, seeing her every time and usually within very close proximity to the vehicle.  This morning she was on the edge of the forest and we had to bundu bash through some thick stuff to get close enough.  Eventually we hit a dead end as the trees increased in number and size and had to stop and stay put.  We were closer than 30m from her but had no visual, although the VHF signal suggested we were not far away at all.  All of a sudden a deep growl came rumbling from the forest, followed by a higher series of almost yelping growls.  She was mating right next to us, without us being able to see anything.  Her suitor is most likely the western male as he was seen in the vicinity of the Hlambanyathi stream not two evenings ago.  They mated about every 3 minutes, with 5 matings taking place in the first 16 minutes after arrival.  Their growls and roars echoed through the forest as we sat so close but yet so far.  The high frequency of mating suggests they met recently as the male still had lots of stamina, but we'll see how long he keeps up the pace.  We believe by tomorrow it should have slowed a bit.  Poor Houdini was less than 500m away in the same drainage line and had to listen to another male mating in the area he was king of until recently.  It is perhaps a good thing that she is mating with another male as the possibility exists that Houdini is Vukile's brother.  The possibility also exists that she is mating with her father right now...  We received 3 GPS collars yesterday to get onto the uncollared cats and the large collar has the western male's name on it.  The frequent sightings we've had of the uncollared cat shouldn't make finding him difficult but this is the complete wrong time of the year to trap leopards.  The high density of easily catchable prey (like young impala and warthog) results in the leopards easily feeding themselves.  Baits tend not to survive too long in this heat either as they quicly start rotting and are consumed by maggots.  Hopefully we'll get that male sometime in next year.  Vukile should give birth around the beginning of March next year if this mating is successful.

We woke up this morning to a slight drizzle but by 7:00 the summer sun was out and the humidity started sky-rocketing.  These are prime conditions to find leopards in trees and Vukile again did not disappoint.  She moved a kilometer or so from where she was yesterday morning and was lounging in a massive knobthorn tree not far from the road.  Unfortunately she climbed out again as the vehicle approached and steadily made her way to a thicket not far from the tree.  We had a beautiful view of the cat as she turned broadside and had a long hard look at us, probably wondering what on earth this vehicle wants with her.  For a change, she kept out of the long grass as it was still wet from the morning's rain and we followed her to the thicket where we lost sight of the cat.  A quick drive around the thicket found her again but we could not see more than a few spots on her belly.  Luckily she got up and walked 10 meters into a slight clearing where she lay down again.  After driving to the other side of the thicket we finally got her in relative open where she was crouched on her belly about 25m away, not seeming too relaxed with the vehicle.  The night's wanderings must have made her tired as her head slowly sagged and within a few minutes she was fast asleep.  She rolled onto her side and then nothing could bother her.  We moved to about 12m from her but she didn't even lift her head when the vehicle started and moved towards her.  Photographic opportunities were limited due to the poor light and with her sleeping on her side, as there were some grass and twigs in the way, but it seems like the daily follow-ups are paying dividends.  She slept like a log for 45 minutes all the while listening to music playing from the vehicle.  We found it easier playing music rather than talking to the cats as you can only say so much to a leopard.  It is hoped that gradually increasing exposure to these human-made sounds will assist in her becoming oblivious to our presence.  Suddenly she woke up with a start after hearing something move in the bushes close by but her attention was divided between what she heard and the vehicle.  She slinked away towards the dam and after giving her a minute we followed slowly.  She crossed the road and entered another thicket where we again lost sight but found her again after turning a 90 degree bend.  This time she was crouched down on her belly again amongst the leaf-litter of the tamboti thicket, not more than 5m from the vehicle.  A movement on the left side of the road caught my eye and we found out what caught her attention.  A herd of nyala were browsing the neighbouring thicket but I accidentally parked the vehicle between her and her prey.  This probably had her suspicious of the vehicle again, and she slinked back to where she came from.  Luckily she only moved a few meters and at this point we left her to resume her hunt.  If she does make a kill it will probably be a highly opportunistic rather than neccessary one, as she seemed to be well-fed after a suspected kill she made 3 days ago.  We'll head back again this afternoon to see if she was successful.

Today was the first day in what seems to be weeks that the sun is shining.  The temperatures are already above 30 degrees at 8:30 in the morning and the humidity is sky-high as a result of the baking sun and wet conditions.  The veld is turning a stunning shade of green and is alive with the sounds of hundreds and birds and thousands of insects.  The impalas have dropped their young and although we've only had a few sightings of these youngsters with their long dangly legs, the rest are sure to come out of hiding quite soon.  We've also seen the first warthog piglets which are the size of rats, although most of them are still in their burrows.  This is a time of plenty for the predators with all the youngsters around and they are bound not to go hungy for the next month or three.

This morning, Vukile was patrolling the northern bank of the Mkuze river, which is the southern boundary of her range.  This is stunning leopard habitat, consisting out of relatively easy sloping banks interspersed with several rocky outcrops along the river.  The flatter areas are lined with huge sycamore figs, many fever trees and some impressive sausage trees.  The reeds along the watercourse are home to nyala, bushbuck, reedbuck and canerats (and some massive pythons which prey on these animals!).  When the river does not flow in the drier months, it can be used as a road and it is probably one of the most scenic areas on the reserve.  We got close to Vukile early this morning, but she was moving along from thicket to thicket, and the particular spot was overgrown with many tamboti trees, displaying their brand-new red coloured leaves.  As it was already very humid at seven this morning we decided to leave her in peace as the possibility existed that she'll find some shade and a cool breeze by climbing a tree should the heat increase any more. 

We went in search of Houdini who was patrolling his northern boundary along the fenceline but the tall grass and fever tree forests was concealing him too well.  He covered about 25km since Tuesday, moving back into the reserve from the east, heading south to visit Caroline and then all the way north for some much needed scent-marking after the rains. 

We headed back to where Vukile was patrolling, but this time aproached her from the southern bank as it was clear she is keeping close to the water's edge on the northern bank.  She has moved a kilometer or so downstream and we had to bundu-bash to get to a beautiful shady spot overlooking a relatively open area on the northern bank.  This time, we were not the first to see her, as the monkeys were already mocking her at the top of their voices.  Their cheeky  calls were echoing through the riverine forest as she purposefully strolled along the northern bank at a brisk pace, as if she was annoyed at being seen by the monkeys and just wanted to escape their attention.  On the way she startled a bushbuck ram and some nyala that were browsing along the river's edge;  their loud alarm barks added bass to the monkeys' high-pitched utterings.  Burchell's coucals were calling from the thick reedbeds, signifying more rain to come, but Vukile was the centre of attention.  Unfortunately she disappeared in the thick reedbeds but it was still a magnificent eye-witness account of the difficulties a self-sufficient pedator experiences.

We've been struggling to locate Houdini for the last week, until my brother found him on the N2 on Saturday evening.  It seems as if he headed east towards the Lebombo Nature Reserve and Mkuze Game Reserve for a bit of exploration.  This is not the first time that he headed east, altough this is the furthest venture we know of.  THe possibility exists that he could be looking for females, as there are only 2 in his territory.  The other possibility is that the western male (possibly Houdini's sire) is beginning to intrude on Houdini's territory and he is moving east out of neccessity.  He only used about 2500ha up to now which is very small for a large male leopard.  The explanations for this could be either a very high or vey low density of leopards in the area.  A very high density should cause dominant animals to use smaller territories, whereas a low density of females will cause males to hold on to whichever females are available to them.  The fact that the collared females used comparatively small areas consisting out of prime habitat could indicate that the female density is either very low or that the collared females are abnormally dominant thereby driving all competing females away (a very unlikely scenario).  Houdini should be back within a few days when I can download his movement data and see what he's been up to whilst we were away.

Vukile has been playing along beautifully and we've recently had several daytime sightings of her.  She is still not as indifferent to vehicles during daytime as she is at night, but it is still incredible to see these animals during the day.  Most sightings occurred in the thick riverine forest alongside the Soetveld and Hlambanyathi streams just before these streams enter the large Hlambanyathi dam.  When seen, she usually crouches and tries to hide, but after realizing she's spotted she will sit up and glare at the vehicle for up to 2 minutes before getting up and moving about 15m away.  There she will lie down again to resume her morning sleep.  We haven't had another sighting of her cubs but at least we'll know when she comes into season again as Houdini should be accompanying her for a few days during this cycle.

It seems as if our new GPS collars will only arrive next year as the German company closed down for upgrades starting November.  This means our collaring of the western cats is postponed for a few months and serious trapping will resume again next year April, unless we come across a fresh kill made by one of the uncollared cats.

Updating the site is becoming a nightmare when attempting to send and receive files using our snails-pace internet.  Three hours of work went down the drain last week when the connection decided to stop working and we haven't been back since - sorry about that. 

On the project front, things are going very well.  We decided to move Caroline into the vacant southern area formerly occupied by Steffie and are awaiting her brand new GPS collar before releasing her here.  She has been residing in the southern boma for a few months now and is now vocalizing frequently in this area.  Houdini also visits her on every occasion he moves south and the love interest still seems to be burning fiercely (judging from his attempts to break in to her enclosure).  The double re-capture has made her more wary of tan-coloured land cruisers, although she has no problem with the green game viewer.  When she is released it will take an intensive follow-up exercise to make her trust management vehicles again.  The fenceline in the area where she broke out will be reinforced even more to try and prevent breakouts.  This is even more important as lions are to be reintroduced next year.

Houdini has been rocketing all around his territory and still makes his massive movements every day.  He spent the major part of last week outside the reserve and underneath the N2 bridge crossing the Mkuze river.  He probably made a kill in this area as his movements were localized around a small part of the northern bank, although mating with one of the Lebombo mountain females cannot be excluded from the equation.  As can clearly be seen from his activity data, he does pretty much nothing during the daylight hours but his nocturnal activity is 4-5 times as high as Vukile's.  Nightly follow ups on him always seem to pay dividends due to his tendency to utilise open terrain in the dark hours. 

Vukile has been putting on quite a show for us over the last few months.  We saw her moving a cub on one occasion but she seems to have lost those just as Caroline did.  Still, even seeing only her is an incredible experience and on occasions (mostly around kills) she'll allow you to within 5 meters of her.  She still has a tendency to use thickly wooded areas which make follow-ups impossible but when found in the open you realize that previous unsuccessful attempts in locating her mean nothing when compared to the reward.  She is just a stunning cat.

Summer is showing itself with daytime temperatures sometimes exceeding the 30 degree mark.  Although the lush summer growth makes tracking and seeing leopards more difficult they tend to spend more time in cool and shady trees during this time of year.  We'll change the VHF broadcasting to include an hour over midday from next week and maybe we can get lucky by finding a cat in a tree.  They seem to have more confidence when perched above you and this could assist in getting better daytime sightings of the animals over the long run.

We conducted another aerial game count on Hlambanyathi last week Tuesday.  Our main aim is to identify all countable species' population growth trends over the last few years.  We weren't flying for more than a few minutes when we came across another leopard male sitting out in the open.  This is in all likelihood the same male we saw from the air a few days ago but a few kilometers south from his previous position.  He had the same casual attitude towards the helicopter hovering a few meters above him but the unknown female that was with him did not.  We only saw her when she broke cover and headed for a nearby drainage line.  The possibility exists that they were mating.  These leopards were far from any roads and in a mountainous part of the reserve not frequently visited.  The area is ideal leopard habitat consisting of scattered rocky outcrops on top of hills with a multitude of drainage lines criss-crossing the lower areas.  At the confluences of these drainage lines there are large shallow pools and a variety of bird and animal species utilise this surface water.  We also saw spotted hyena, cheetahs, porcupines, bushpigs and a host of other species not usually seen. 

Unknown to us, Caroline escaped from the holding enclosure on Monday evening and whilst we were flying, she was heading straight back to the community area.  This proves that she has become a stock-killer, as there was no reason for her to leave the boma with enough food, water and shelter available to her.  Houdini visited her on several occasions but these two have spent time together previously, Houdini being the sire of her last litter of cubs.  She left the enclosure and was back within the community land within two days, killing a goat that same evening.  After darting her last week, she was extremely wary of the vehicle and did not offer us an open shot from the ground and we therefore decided to call in the services of a helicopter.  After less than 10 minutes of flying time, the dart was in and we used the helicopter to fly her back in to the reserve rather than waste time driving back on the bumpy road.  Her behaviour has come as a shock to us as it is clear she can look after herself in the wild, but just realized that goats are so much easier to catch.  She is currently in the southern boma (Steffie's old enclosure) and we are awaiting an export permit to relocate her to a larger reserve in the north with no neighbouring communities to eliminate the possibility of further stock killing.  We are extremely happy with her progression from a nervous cat with no previous exposure to natural wild conditions to the relaxed individual she has become, looking after herself, interacting with other cats and even giving birth to a litter of cubs.  She will be sorely missed.

Three days ago Caroline managed to find a hole in the fence and escaped through it.  Making matters worse is that she caught a goat roaming around on the other side.  It seems as if she was forcefully driven away from a reedbuck kill she made a few days ago.  This caused her to move south and west, eventually reaching the boundary line where goats roam the other side on a daily basis.  The temptation must have proven too great for her and she picked herself a huge billy goat as her next meal.  We became aware that she escaped when looking for her on Wednesday.  It was a sickening feeling to find the VHF signal originating from our south-western neighbours, which consists of an informal settlement along the Mkuze river.  Many questions entered my mind about the state of her well-being (at first I feared she was poached) and the state of any other person on the other side's well-being, as the area is also frequented by young herdboys.  Even though her VHF signal stopped broadcasting at 9:30 I still decided to head out and attempt to locate her, as we at least had some sort of direction on her.  She was located using the handheld remote download unit that works in tandem with the collars, by activating the collar's send/receive function and uploading a new VHF schedule which broadcasts 24hrs/day.  Getting into close proximity of her was easy after this but the area is heavily encroached by sickle-bush which resulted in my ATV getting a lot more nicks and scratches than we bargained for.  Although she was in plain sight, there was always intervening grass or twigs between us which made darting impossible.  The noises eminating from nearby people also seemed to scare her, and she was not as bold as she usually is, therefore never coming into the open to allow a clear shot.  After nearly 3 hours of sitting with her and finally coaxed her out of a thicket.  By this time she has moved about 700m away from the kill already, the whole time darting in between thickets and just keeping the bush between us and her.  My heart raced as she stepped into the open, about 15m from us.  This was most likely the last chance we'll get today as the bush just became thicker the further south we went, and darting from foot is out of the question.  Luckily the dart flew true and stuck in the middle of her shoulder.  The previous sentence is the perfect way to spell relief, and the long wait and stalking efforts paid off.  She was down within a few minutes and we blindfolded and hogtied her before loading her onto the vehicle to make a high-speed dash for the boma.

She had a bite-mark on her left front leg, probably caused by another leopard.  The problem is that we do not know of any other territorial female in that area, even after intensive baiting and camera trapping the previous years.  The fact that she stayed in that particular area for more than 5 months now, vocalizing and scent marking without incident can indicate that this could have been a once-off clash.  She did not have any noticeable claw marks on her which is usually a good indication of a fight between leopards.  We found male tracks in the area and it is possible that she did not allow the male on her kill, which could have caused him to nip at her, although a good slap is usually the order of the day.  The bite mark consisted of two holes caused by the upper and lower canines on one side, and was also the only mark on her body.  This still caused her to relocate south-west and getting driven towards the fence. 

Steffie's death has left us with the option to relocate Caroline to her original boma in the south, as we believe there are no other female leopards in this part of the reserve.  This is confirmed by Houdini's GPS data, as although the area falls in his territory, he has only visited it 3 times in 6 weeks, and covered a huge area but never staying more than a day.  The area is also too small to contain another dominant male and we hope that Caroline accepts this as a new home.

Over the weekend we conducted a helicopter game count on the farms Soetveld and Marica as this is a 2500 hectare portion we are planning on including into the main reserve within the next year.  To our surprise, less than 15 minutes into the flight we came across a huge male leopard lying down in the shade of a weeping boer bean tree.  This was our first sighting of the particular male and judging by his size, he should be a dominant male in that area.  This could be the male that rules over the western part of Hlambanyathi, as according to Houdini's GPS data, he never ventures into the western sector.  Another possibility exists that it could be the dominant male on Soetveld but he'll definitely be using a larger range than the 2500 odd hectares available there, and that another male is residing on Doornhoek.  We have therefore decided to start baiting and camera trapping in that area to identify the residents and their approximate range use.  The male showed little fear of the helicopter as we hovered about 20m above him, but decided to slowly give way and move into the thickets.  We kept our eyes open for any other leopards whilst flying but obviously couldn't get that lucky twice in one morning.

Vukile was 900m from her den site this morning and we headed into the thick fever tree forests to have a look at the den site, and maybe even see some cubs as we estimate them at 5 weeks of age now.  The going was hard as the whole area is infested by Chromolaena odorata (triffid weed) which can be used as denning sites due to the entangling thickets formed by this alien plant.  The going was slow but we got closer and closer.  Vukile's den site is on a slightly raised area overlooking the confluence of two streams.  The area also has a lot of fever trees and fig trees which prefer the lower ground where more moisture is available in the soil.  We bushwacked through the thick stuff, following game trials (thanks elephant and buffalo) until we reached the second stream which we followed as it was more open.  According to the GPS we were 55m from the den site when we heard the first rustling of grass towards the den site.  This could have been any animal (perhaps a bushpig) and as we checked Vukile's position less than 10 minutes ago, we were confident that she was not there.  We slowly continued closer and a few seconds later we heard a large animal move through the vegetation, this time accompanied by a deep growl.  The three of us immediately stopped and looked at one another with huge eyes, thereby confirming that it wasn't just our imaginations.  That was a very deep growl and also very unlikely to be uttered by a 5 week old cub.  Discretion was the better part of valour and be headed straight back to the vehicles.  The den site can be investigated at a later stage.

We are getting some incredible movement and activity data on the collared leopards but sightings of Houdini and Vukile remain scarce as these are your more typical leopards with high nocturnal, but hardly any diurnal activity.  We therefore decided to start tracking them at night and duly changed the scheduling of the VHF broadcasting signal to remain on after dark.  It seems like night time is the right time as the first time we tracked them at night we first came across Houdini lying out in the open.  He seemed to be slightly relaxed and he was lying on his side, seemingly just as curious about us as we were about him.  He is a magnificent cat and I would so dearly love to see him like this during daytime.  We watched him for a good few minutes and headed towards where Vukile was, hunting north of the Hlambanyathi dam.  We located her within a very short time and to our surprise, with a little cub in her mouth.  She was probably moving den sites as the cubs have been in the first den site for an unbelievable 5 weeks!  She was wary with us being in the company of her little cub, as this was the first time she encountered a vehicle whilst being with her cub and out in the open.  We followed her with the low range gear ratio engaged and had a wonderful sighting of this beautiful cat.  It was an unbelievable evening to find our two wildest cats within 15 minutes of one another, with the cub being an absolute added bonus.

A cold front came by last night and with the icy wind howling both cats preferred to keep in the thicker stuff; Vukile with her cubs in the thickets and Houdini seeking refuge below the dam wall.  We caught a few glimpses of Houdini through the thick bush but he was not on his way anywhere.  The icy wind forced us home earlier as we were spoilt by our previous sightings of the cats in the open - unbelievable how quickly the goal posts have shifted...  Our nocturnal following of the cats will continue and if all goes well they'll allow us some daytime sightings quite soon.

The GPS collars are amazing tools for wildlife monitoring, as without them we would never have noticed that Vukile keeps returning to one particular spot.  After downloading and mapping her movement data yesterday morning it became as clear as daylight that there is an area within the fever tree forest that she keeps returning to, which is no doubt a litter of cubs.  She has been wearing a GPS collar for about a week but withing that week she has made no less than 10 movements to and from one localized area within the forest.  We have currently got about 10 readings of her in that area, and all within 10m from one another.  Her hunting forays can also clearly be seen on the map, with huge loops beginning and ending in the same spot.  This morning at 6:00 she was still with a kill she made about 400m from the lodge after spending the whole Sunday there and I picked her up at 8:00 back with her cubs.  We haven't seen the cubs yet and the fact that they have been in one den site for nearly 3 weeks indicated that they are still very young, and definitely less than 3 months old.  I can't wait for the day they finally emerge from the den site and start following their mother around.  The den site is within Houdini's territory and the cubs should be safe from him, but there is quite a high concentration of spotted hyenas in the area and we hope she can successfully raise the cubs until they are able to climb trees in order to avoid danger.

Caroline also made a kill yesterday but I could not find it to verify what she caught.  She was in good condition and rested a few meters from the vehicle, with the smell of a kill hanging in the late afternoon air.  The area she has chosen for herself makes leopard spotting very difficult as the grass is more than 1.5m tall in some places, and photographic opportunities are therefore limited.

The cats made life hard for us this morning as we couldn't decide which one to follow up on.  Houdini and Vukile were in close proximity this morning, both being south of the dense Hlambanyathi stream.  Whilst standing on a rise overlooking the area they were in, some vervet monkeys were alarm calling in Houdini's vicinity, no doubt having spotted him.  He was, however, in a particularly dense area with no road access and I decided to head after Vukile.  The area she was in could not be described as open but I hoped for at least a glimpse of her.  I approached quite close and her signal came from the direction of a herd of nyalas, so I stopped and turned off the engine.  After downloading her GPS and activity data I checked on Houdini's signal and found it to be coming from about 200m to the west. 

Rather leaving Vukile in peace to do her hunting I headed towards Houdini to download his newly logged data but the moment I finished, one of the nyalas barked a gruff alarm call where I just came from.  They no doubt saw something they didn't like and have moved slightly east of their initial position.  Rushing back there I realized Vukile was close to them, and they were clearly nervous, stepping around with heads and ears moving side to side.  The VHF signal confirmed Vukile was close, really close but still well hidden and just waiting for an unfortunate animal to walk by.  Suddenly, the nyala herd split in two and were running.  It seems like the nyala's barks attracted two spotted hyenas, who came running in at full steam, wanting to investigate the cause of the nyala's alarm calls.  They ran straight to the cat, which broke cover and headed to the safety of the large fever trees nearby.  Houdini himself probably came over to investigate the alarm calls and Vukile stumbled across him whilst running away from the hyenas.  They disappeared from sight into the thick stuff and I sat there with a helluva predicament on how to get visual on the animals again.  I tried several paths to get closer to the action but got blocked of each time as the openings between the trees just got narrower and the trees only thicker.  Finally, after a few dead-ends and high speed maneuvers through the thick bush I got close but not close enough to see anything.  The cats were still together but just behind a thick clump of bush, with a pushed over umbrella thorn blocking my only way.  Behind that one tree was a huge clearing but with absolutely no way of getting there.  Frustrated, but still smiling as a result of the wonderful scene I was just a spectator to, I headed to Caroline to find a more accommodating cat.

She was sleeping in a drainage line next to the road, and barely looked up when I finally stopped next to her (I drove past without seeing her the first time...).  She was as round and full as a leopard can be and did not even try and emulate the sighting I just had of the other cats.  Looking at her full belly I do not blame her and after spending a few minutes with her and seeing that she was in good nick, I headed home.

I received a phone call late Saturday night and was informed that Caroline caught a goat.  The goat somehow got inside the reserve and was easy prey for her.  This is very worrying because we do not want her to start specifically targeting livestock, although there is not supposed to be any livestock within the reserve.  The community members were upset by this occurrence but better animal husbandry practices by them will minimize the chance of this happening in future, since the herd boys chased the goats onto our land and into the reserve.  We are currently busy lowering and pegging the fenceline into the soil around the area where the incident took place which should make it even harder for anything to get in or out.  Any leopard would have taken the opportunity to kill such an easy meal but it is still disconcerting that the leopard in discussion was Caroline. 

I went after Houdini this morning but he is as elusive as only a leopard can be.  He was back in his favoured area north of the Hlambanyathi stream, which can only be described as excellent leopard habitat and in no small measure due to the amount of cover for stalking (and hiding!).  Whilst following him, he passed in close proximity of 2 nyala herds which started after him with large eyes but did not utter any alarm calls.  They were probably confused about why this massive male leopard slinked past them without any intention of catching them or maybe they just didn't see him at all.  Each day we attempt to come within relative close proximity of him without harassing him by crashing through the bush after him.  He should become used to this and perhaps allow himself to be seen but only time will tell.  He made a suspected kill about 500m from my house on the southern bank of the river and spent at least 2 nights there before venturing far south and returning to where I found him this morning.

Vukile's VHF collar is a nearly useless item and searching for signal whilst on the higher hills rewarded us with dead static on the receiver.  It was actually whilst going after a cheetah male this morning that I decided to check for her location again and finally obtained a direction to head into.  Were it not for her relatively small home range she would probably have been impossible to track down.  I headed south towards the red pipeline crossing and along a road she frequently uses when moving in between her 2 favoured areas, being the fever tree forests along the Hlambanyathi and Soetveld streams and the lower reaches and southern bank of the Mkuze river up to the lodge.  As I approached, the receiver started beeping loudly but I honestly did not expect to find her that easily.  She sat bolt upright at the approach of the vehicle and was just as inquisitive about me as I was about her.  This was only my second (proper) sighting of her but her behaviour suggests that if correctly handled she should become accustomed to vehicles easily.  She was on a fresh female nyala kill, most likely made this morning and she had barely started feeding on the carcass.  The kill is presently less than 30m from the road but she'll probably move it into a nearby thicket a bit later.  She showed small signs of nervousness and after staring at me for a minute or 2, she lay down in the grass.  When I started the vehicle she would sit upright again and stare at me with her large eyes (her ears also seem larger than Caroline's as those were the first things I saw, but then again, Caroline's ears aren't exactly whole anymore).  The kill should provide some viewing of her for the next few days and will help a lot in getting her accustomed to vehicles.  The only postive spinoff about her carrying a VHF collar is that we get 24hr broadcast and can perhaps go view her at night when all leopards seem to have more confidence.

Houdini is still up to his usual tricks and seeing him seems to be impossible - quite a feat considering how close we get to him and how well he hides himself despite his size.  We have come very close over the last 3 days and each time he would be hiding a few meters from the road.  We do not want to follow him off-road yet as he might consider this as aggresive behaviour on our part and we'll only do drive-bys and spend a couple of minutes in close proximity to him before leaving again.  If we keep this up for a while he should realize at some stage that a vehicle does not neccessarily mean bad news and he'll allow himself to be seen.  He has thus far utilised a total area of 3800 hectares since being collared and it is nice to see repeating movement patterns from his data.  He'll most likely use a larger area but seems to be content with the circuits he completes at the moment.  We plotted his activity data yesterday and was surprised at his lack of diurnal movements.  This is usually more typical of nervous animals and it will be interesting to see if his activity patterns change over the long-term (should we get him more relaxed, though).

Vukile is found in the fever tree and riverine forest without exception.  She is still slightly shy and prefers to keep away from vehicles but with some effort in habituating her to vehicles should pay off in the long run, as is evident of previous sightings of her.  The biggest obstacle in our way is the dense areas she prefers to hunt in and although you can get within a few meters of her, any sighting is obscured by the dense undergrowth (in most cases the invader Chromolaena odorata).  If all goes well we can start clearing again within this year and start taking on that pest for good.  Vukile's collar is not as reliable as the Vectronics units we use on the other cats so her signal quality is poor at the best of times, but you realize how close you get to her when the tracking device seems near bursting point when emitting is beeping noises.  Her core area seems to be the upper reaches of the Soetveld stream behind the Hlambanyathi dam as she is found in the area at least 50% of the time.  This is the area where she and her mother Matilda spent their last few months together before Matilda disappeared and the possibility that Matilda moved back to her prior home range can not be excluded.

Caroline's suspected honeymoon is over and she is back in the vicinity of her koppie.  Whilst following her yesterday she nearly caught a common duiker but the little antelope was just too quick for her and disappeared in the long grass with high leaps and bounds.  She only followed a short distance (about 10m) before giving up, but she is well-fed at the moment and probably did not exert all the effort needed to catch such a quick moving antelope.  We followed her for hundreds of meters through a vast open grassland and even when following in close proximity she would stilll disappear in the golden late-winter grass without even trying.  The difficulty in finding her again in the long grass was quite amusing.

We have a strong suspicion that Caroline is mating again, which in all likelihood means that her cubs are dead.  We cannot rule out the possibility that the male she is mating with now is the cause of her missing cubs as he was not the sire of her previous litter and it is not uncommon for a dominant male to kill any offspring that he did not sire.  Caroline was mated by Houdini around new year but gave birth to her first litter outside of Houdini's territory (which we can confirm with GPS data).  There is no man-made boundaries that define Houdini's range and from the 120-odd confirmed positions we have on him, he has never ventured into the west of the reserve towards Doornhoek.  It seems the western boundary of his range is defined by the Doornhoek stream heading north-west to south-east which confirms that there is another unknown dominant male utilising that area, probably of similar size to Houdini.  This male was seen by some guests whilst we were fitting Houdini with his GPS collar and unfortunately they could not manage a picture before he disappeared. 

Cub mortalities in the wild are high, especially for the first litter of an unexperienced female.  After losing her cubs, a female may recycle into oestrus within any time period ranging from 2 - 6 weeks.  Some females have even been seen mating although they were raising cubs at that stage.  I was with Caroline for the last 2 days and tried as I could, I just could not get a sighting of her.  She stayed just out of sight and within about 40m of the vehicle.  When I called her in, she would come right up to the vehicle and did not display any fear or anxiety and her erratic movements at pace is most likely the result of going after the male which is not accustomed to vehicles.  This realization set in when I was following her yesterday and her modus operandi all of a sudden seemed very similar to Houdini's evasive tactics when being followed.  The possibility exists that her cubs were running away from the vehicle but it is a very small chance as the speed and distance they covered would have been too much for 3 month old cubs.  Their relaxed attitude towards vehicles also minimizes this possibility.  A female's urge to mate is strongly developed and she will follow a male around wherever he goes.  I recount an article I read where a male leopard climbed into a thin silver cluster leaf tree to get away from the female's attentions.  She promptly followed but their combined weight was too much for the tree which bent down sharply, resulting in both cats tumbling to the ground, where they mated again.  Caroline's activity data confirms major nocturnal activity within one spot, and I know that she is not hungry as I gave her a whole impala carcass hoping that she would head to the cubs after she had eaten her fill.  If they were mating, it occurred at regular intervals mostly at night, as her activity readings are measured to the limit of the collars capability, which is unusual activity for a well-fed leopard that stays in one spot.

We arrived this morning from a week-long course and have been searching high and low without having a single sighting of Caroline's cubs.  The last time we saw them was 12 days ago at pride rock and Caroline's GPS data shows erratic and huge movements.  The distances she moved would be too much for any cub to follow and added to that, we found her on an impala kill this afternoon where she has spent the last 3 days.  Incidentally, the cheetah female caught an impala not 500m from Caroline's position and was also feeding.  Caroline's latest movements does not show any affinity to a particular area as has been the case when she stashed her cubs when she went out hunting.  We'll follow up on her again tomorrow morning but the chances that the cubs are still alive are very slim indeed.  Leopards often lose litters to other predators which could have been the case in this instance.  Houdini is spending some time in the riverine forest in the area where he was caught the first time and it is good to know that he is still within the reserve boundaries.  We did not pick up any signal on Vukile but did not search the east of the reserve where she spends some of her time.  Tomorrow will be a busy day trying to get into a position to download Houdini's data and to get a signal on Vukile.  If the cubs are still alive we should bump into them sooner or later if we keep following Caroline. 

We've had a very busy start of June with the cats giving us a hard time of tracking.  Houdini and Vukile (Matilda's cub) were mating in one of the fever tree forests and spent 3 days together in the same spot.  Afterwards, Vukile made one movement down the river but turned around in front of the lodge and headed straight back to the the area they mated in.  Since then she has been spending all her time in the dense fever tree forests and we have not had a single sighting of her.  She was quite close to a road this morning but the area was just too dense to see her.  The vervet monkeys had no such problems and were making more noise than the crowd at Loftus Versfeld (when the Bulls are in front of course).  Houdini has made some surprising movements but currently seems to be centered around the Hlambanyathi dam.  Last night he walked past our house and into Steffie's former territory where he spent a few hours, probably looking for her, but he headed straight back to within a kilometer or two from Vukile.

Caroline is still on top of her koppie but we have not had a single sighting of her cubs since last week Wednesday.  Her GPS movements show no affiliation to a particular area where she could have hidden the cubs and this is really starting to worry us.  Whenever we found her, she was not close to any of her former denning sites.  She was calling for the cubs on one occasion but they did not respond and the possibility exists that something bad could have happened to them.  Only time will tell if they are still alive but we are hoping for the best. 

I surprised Caroline this morning whilst she was in the process of moving her cubs.  When I came across them they were relaxing in the open, although the grass was about knee-high and the only way I knew the cubs were present was by the grass around Caroline suddenly jumping to life as one cub would pounce on another.  After resting for about 20 minutes Caroline got up, and grabbing one cub by the scruff of the neck, started marching towards a collection of large boulders we jokingly referred to as pride rock when once passing there.  For the cub that was not carried, the whole trip seemed an adventure in itself as the little one would bound over tall grasses and tree stumps to keep up with its mother and sibling.  In typical "Lion King" fashion, Caroline made herself at home on top of the boulder whilst the cubs ran around the area quite energetically.  Her tail was once again a target for both cubs and she had to lash it upwards several times to escape the cubs' attention (and no-doubt razor sharp teeth)!  This was the first time I came across Caroline moving denning sites with a cub in her mouth, and it will probably be the last time with this litter, as the little one showed who followed at (nearly) the same speed as its mother.  Today was also the first time that Caroline has moved her cubs from the mountain top and into a flatter area that can possibly be reached with a game viewing vehicle.  The cubs are 60 days old today and if some textbooks are correct, she should be introducing them to meat quite soon.

Sightings of Caroline have just became difficult again as she has moved her cubs back to their third den site.  We found her hunting this morning, and dearly wanting to see the cubs headed to the old den site where we wasted a considerable amount of time waiting for her cubs.  Meanwhile, she moved into some thick stuff and when we came back to look for her it was almost impossible to get into a good viewing position.  We left her and hoped that by this afternoon she'd be back with the cubs.  As we'd hoped she was with them but the direction indicated by the VHF signal came as a bit of a surprise.  We had to drive back around the koppie she was on and moved up it by driving next to a flat area next to a donga that leads upwards.  They are in a very rocky area again and it took some serious maneuvering to get into a relatively good position.  Luckily she was resting on top of a boulder and the moment we stopped both her cubs popped out of their hiding holes and started suckling almost immediately.  We got to about 12 meters but there was still a lot of intervening branches and grass stalks in the way (from a photographic perspective, at least) but it was still such a great priviledge to be a spectator to the scene.  Our daily visits seem to be paying off as the cubs did not even lift their heads the several times we started the engine to move into a slightly better position.  We got some curious glances from them but they did not seem to be alarmed in any way, which bodes well for future game viewing once they finally quit the den sites and come back to the flatter areas with its higher game concentration.  On the way back we bumped into our new cheetah female who made a kill shortly before we arrived.  We sat with her while the sun set in another glorious show of reds, oranges and yellows.

Winter is well and truly here as we can attest from driving home after the sun has set.  Early mornings are almost not an option to go out on the ATV as you freeze to death after covering the 15 odd kilometers to get to Caroline and the cubs.  It seems as if Friday's realization that dawned on her has left a permanent impression as she almost completely ignores us and the vehicle even though we are sitting completely exposed, with just our legs below the knees not showing.  We were with her on Sunday, following her back from a combined hunting expedition and patrol and she barely looked at us whereas in the past we would be treated to much suspicion when compared to a large land cruiser.  It was great us usual to follow in the exact path she walked and make our way up the mountain using her paths.  At one stage we could follow no further as the rocks she was climbing over were too rough to tread over, and we passed her using another route and waited at the den site.  The sun had already set when she arrived and we could just barely see her outline in the gathering darkness.  She was less than a few meters from us when she started with her soft contact calls, which almost sounds like saying "Ow" in a croaky voice.  Literally a few seconds later both cubs were with and all over her and their bathing session started.  It seems as if the habituation has paid off as the cubs did not even move when I started the engine, but were quite wary when the vehicle started moving. 

We found Caroline again last night, resting about 200m from the den site, but only after we visited the cubs at the den site.  They were in a crevice when we approached but soon came out and started exploring around the rocks, chasing after lizards and possibly other small creatures.  Just as suddenly as the appeared they were gone again and no other viewpoint could give us a clear sighting of them.  It is impossible to say whether Caroline was resting far away for some peace and quiet but it is not unimaginable as the cubs hardly ever leave her alone when they are together at the denning site.  She was not active at all and I sat with her until late.  She did once move down a donga to investigate some noise she heard but I left her sitting there wihout a care in the world.

I found Caroline yesterday afternoon as she was out hunting about 500m from the den site.  She was in an area with a lot of low scrub and it took me a very long time to find her, but when I finally saw her it seems as if she has been sitting in the open all along, watching me.  She was about 15m away from the open ATV and after watching one another for about 20 minutes she made a decision.  She slowly walked up to the open vehicle, seeming quite curious and not afraid at all.  When she was about 3m away I let her know she was too close but she obviously does not understand Afrikaans!  It was the closest I've been to her in the open vehicle and the fact that I did not have a windshield, window or door to close I decided to move back.  I started the engine and she did not even flinch, and just sat down and had a good close-up look at me.  I moved back about 15 meters and stopped the vehicle again, and she got up again and moved closer.  By this time I could see that she was actively hunting and not worried about my presence at all, as all matter of things happening around us caught her eye - some wildebeest uttering their "gnu" sounds on the neighbouring hillside, hornbills calling in a duet, flocks of small birds flying low and fast to their roosting sites and sounding like a jet plane rather than the collection of little things they are and some rustles in the grass made by some small animal.  She walked right past the back of the vehicle and stopped for a while to have a look at me again, but lost interest quickly.  Finally, she flopped down in an open clearing where she lay until I left her after dark.

Dearly wanting to see the cubs again, I went out this afternoon to make an effort to get them on video.  The light was a stunning deep golden colour as it is almost every afternoon now and the shot I had in mind was one of Caroline sunning herself on the warm-baked rocks in the last rays of the day with the little ones playing around her.  As luck would have it she was lying in the exact position I was hoping for, on that massive boulder and bathing in lovely golden rays but the cubs ducked into a miniature cave the moment the vehicle came too close.  No problems, I thought.  I'll wait...  Literally a few seconds later one of only two clouds in the sky moved in between the sun and our position and there all the beautiful light disappeared.  The clouds were not in a particular hurry and I sat quietly in that position waiting on the light and the cubs, but all to no avail.  Finally, my patience reached its limit and I decided to move around the back of the den site and look straight back into the sun (albeit behind the clouds), if only to get a better look at Caroline.  The shot I had imagined suddenly lost several key components on my wishlist, including good light and no obstructions!  I would be happy just to see the little ones.  Caroline turned around when I approached so now I had whatever little light there is shining on her blunt end (i.e. not her head and face), and I thought things can not go any worse!  However, a few seconds later she started uttering soft cub contact calls, and within seconds the cubs were out of their lair and all over their mom.  Our patience in following her with the open ATV's paid off as she climbed down the rock and lay down in the open, 14m away from me (according to the camera's focus reading).  The cubs pounced on her again and immediately started suckling.  They suckled for 5 minutes or so and then some serious play started.  They ran up and down the boulders, alternately taking turns to chase and tackle one another, and then for good measure just making sure mom can't sleep by pouncing on her from on top of the rocks.  If one went up a tree, the other was sure to follow, and they only periodically glanced in my direction.  The cubs need to learn about vehicles and that they don't pose a threat so habituation started today.  I started the engine for a short interval and the sound was overwhelming in the quiet surroundings.  The cubs scattered immediately but only went about 6 feet each when they realized the sound disappeared.  No problems then, and they resumed play by both tackling mom and going after her tail.  I sat with them for a while until the sun set when Caroline got up and climbed on to a boulder, probably to enjoy the last heat of the day caught up in the rock.  I started the engine and drove closer but this was too much for the cubs who ducked into one of the many crevices in the rocks.  Finally I had an open view of her, with no bushes and grass interfering, and also only about 8 meters away.  The light through the video camera was a beautiful mix of violet and light greens, with some soft yellow residual light highlighting the outline of the cat's fur whilst the fur underneath her body retained its white.  I decided to try and imitate Caroline's cub call and unbelievably, a few seconds later, one of the cubs popped out of the hole it was hiding in and climbed up the rock next to mom.  It stared at me for a good few minutes before settling down for a bout of suckling.  The camera rolled throughout the event and I was amazed by the amount of light still useable even after the sun set.  It was an incredible day.

This morning started off by finding Caroline with a freshly killed warthog piglet.  Incidentally, she was about 20m away from where I found her yesterday so I was convinced that the cubs were in her immediate vicinity but again searching for them proved fruitless.  At least Caroline was looking after herself quite well which was some form of consolation for the fact that we haven't seen the cubs for 2 weeks.  We located Caroline again yesterday afternoon, this time lying on top of a massive vertical boulder which is probably 4m in height.  She was bathed in stunning late afternoon light and just as I set up the camera and 600mm lens a small head popped out behind mom!  I cannot begin to describe how relieved I was.  The cub crawled over his mother and came to rest underneath her chin, with both cats staring down at me about 20m away.  The cub did not appear frightened at all although Caroline was initially a little wary of my presence.  Whilst Caroline and the little male stared down on me, the little female behind them was making a full-hearted effort at catching her mother's tail.  Who knows what she'll do with it once she gets it but she enjoyed herself immensely.  The cubs' eyes have already taken on a normal colour and they have really grown a lot in the last few days.  I was just as surprised at their agility when jumping from rock to rock or going after Caroline's tail.  I think the female caught the tailtip twice, and judging from Caroline's surprised reaction the cubs' teeth have probably emerged as well...  As luck (or preparation) would have it, I did not take the video camera along but I'll be back this afternoon to see if we can get some documentary shots of the little ones playing.

We arrived home last night after a wonderful weekend away, and we got some very nice leopard shots to boot.  I was out in the cold this morning to track down Caroline and found her at the rocks where we believed the second denning site was.  She was sunning herself on top of a large boulder but wasn't very agreeable to the ATV approaching too close.  She seemed quite anxious in my presence and climbed up and down the rocks several times, so I hoped that this was a new den site.  Once again I realized how well a leopard can camouflage itself as she climbed down the rocks and sneaked by my only a few meters away without me noticing her.  When I switched on the telemetry device a few minutes later she was already 100 meters away and stalking some impala.  The herd consisted of a single male and his harem of about 20 females and the male was mating with some females.  Hopefully this distracts the impalas so that Caroline can catch one and feed herself for several days.  I headed back to the den site and quickly scanned through it by foot but saw no sign of the cubs.  Houdini was seen again on Thursday afternoon and apparently it was an incredible sighting.  He was found in the road at round about dusk and was rolling around seeming very pleased with himself.  I've been driving around every day to find him yet I've never had a close-up sighting of him, but if he continues to settle down as he is now, it shouldn't be too long before we start seeing him on a regular basis.

Caroline is making it extremely difficult for us to track her down.  We believe that the cubs are still held at den site 5 as this was the direction she headed to whilst we followed her this afternoon.  She was out hunting and judging from her condition she did not catch anything.  I followed her up and down steep hillsides but could never get a clear glimpse untill she entered a donga leading up towards the top of the hill that she is holding her cubs in.  Unfortunately she decided that the donga was a convenient resting place before she tackles the steep incline ahead of her and I had to wait for nearly an hour before she decided to head back to her cubs.  I had an idea of where she was, but even driving along both sides and through the donga I could not see her at all, and remembered someone who once wrote that you do not see a leopard, but a leopard allows itself to be seen.  When she finally started moving back I engaged the low-range on the vehicle and followed alongside her all the way to the top of the hill.  It was, as usual, an incredible feeling of awe to be driving alongside a beautiful cat such as her in a vehicle that is completely open.  We are leaving for Mpumalanga on Wednesday and will only be back on Sunday, when we'll start baiting again in preperation for later capture.  Houdini was at a bait again last night and being up to his usual tricks, stole even the rope to which the bait was attached.  If he continues like this I'll have to get another 30m length really soon.

It is incredible how fast time flies and that the cubs are a month old today.  They were moved for the 4th time yesterday after spending 2 weeks in their 4th den site, which is a really long time.  Ntombi, our cheetah female, also left her cubs in one site for 16 days so it seems that the better the denning site, the longer the female will leave her cubs in it.  Caroline was out hunting today and we walked up to the area where we believed the den was located to see if the cubs were still doing well.  Even at this age their camouflage is incredible and it took us a considerable time to find them amongst the dense vegetation and broken boulders.  The little male gave his position away by a hiss and a snarl and nearly gave me a heart attack as he uttered those noises when I was nearly on top of him.  We could clearly discern the lovely hole that Caroline sleeps in but we could not see the female cub.  I walked (climbed) around the bottom of the den site and really started worrying that something could have happened to the female, when I spotted her, lying about 2 meters from me on a rock, and just staring at me with large grey-blue eyes which are just starting to show a hint of the leopard's normal yellow-green eye colour.  Whilst I was on the other side looking for the female, Mariska saw the little male move about in the den site, and apparently he already moves very fast for such a young creature, as she saw him climbing over rocks and tree stumps.  We snapped 10 quick pictures on burst mode and left the cubs in peace to await their mother's return.  The 5th den site is inaccessible to a vehicle and sightings of the cubs will be very rare for the next week or so and we are holding thumbs that Caroline moves the cubs to a better position (from our point of view) quite soon, as valuable filming time is lost with the cubs being in such a difficult area.  She, however, probably knows better than us what she is doing and we'll just have to be patient and see what happens.

Caroline caught a wildebeest calf yesterday and finished a large portion of the carcass.  There is still a lot of meat left and the carcass should last her for a few days.  We followed her this morning as she was heading back to the fourth den site over some very rough rocky terrain.  This was the first time we saw how cautiously she approaches the den site, barely making a sound.  We expected to see the cubs come out to greet her but they could possibly be afraid of the sound made by the vehicle's engine.  She plopped down on a large and comfortable looking boulder outside the entrance to their den site and promptly fell asleep.  This was the first time we approached her this close in an open vehicle and initially she was slightly worried about our presence, but relaxed completely after a few minutes.  We spent nearly 2 hours with her and before leaving I slowly stood up to see whether the cubs are around but saw nothing whatsoever.  This annoyed her and she made her feelings clear by lashing her tail around, but luckily did not display more aggression.  We left her so she could rest in peace.

The fourth den site is such a good one that Caroline seems reluctant to move her cubs to a new area.  Every sighting we have of her is over quite quickly, as she usually shows herself to investigate the vehicle arriving but then ducks back in between the boulders.  She is probably hunting at night as we are unaware is she has been away from her cubs over the last few days.  We have posted some pictures of the cubs in our leopard gallery but by the time we see them again their eyes will probably have taken on a more yellow-green hue.

I picked up Caroline's signal far away from the den site, and was worried that something happened to the cubs.  I rushed to the top of the mountain where the fourth den site is located, and after searching for almost 20 minutes, I finally located the cubs safely lying in a crevice.  After a few quick pics I left them in peace and went after Caroline.  She was about 3km from the den site, and moving away.  I could see that she was hungry and left her in peace but came across her at about 12:00 again, in the river bed.  After locating her again this afternoon she still hasn't caught anything but was heading back in the direction of the den site.  The golden afternoon light was beautiful and I leap-frogged her 3 times with the vehicle to get ahead of her.  I got some great shots of the cat walking straight towards me, and each time she passed the driver side door without even glancing up.  She was still far from the den site, and maybe now, with darkness on her side, she'll catch an unwary animal.  Whilst heading back, she was scent marking intensively but that was to be expected as she hasn't been in that part of her range for the last 3 weeks.  The remote download unit has returned from Germany and if I have it by next week we'll have a lot of data to download, and finally update the activity patterns for March and April.  Houdini did not visit the bait last night but we expected that he will head away in order to continue patrolling his territory.  He'll most likely be back soon.

Caroline moved her cubs into the 4th denning site, which is at the top of the koppie she has been spending a lot of time at.  The den site is right at the top, and it took some careful driving to get all the way there, but the view is spectacular.  Apart from the tall marulas, knobthorns, bushwillows and flowering kudu lilys she has a complete 360 degree view of riverine forest, open grassy plains and more hills to the west.  There is quite a large concentration of animals on the hill with some resident kudus, wildebeest and impala that are in close proximity to the denning site.  The last time we saw the cubs were 6 days ago but the location of this particular den site makes it impossible to see them, unless we investigate the site by foot whilst she is away.  We sat there for the whole afternoon yesterday, hoping to catch a glimpse of the cats but with no luck.  The den site is located between several large trees growing between large broken boulders, which creates ideal hiding places for the cubs.  I decided to call her in today to make sure she was fine and we had a magnificent sighting of her as she appeared on the top of the largest boulder, staring down at us about 30m below her.  She was in very good condition and probably made a recent kill in the vicinity.  My remote download unit should be arriving within the week, and I'll be able to download the mass of data stored on the collar, which should make for interesting observations regarding the time of birth, location and  time spent at denning sites, her preferred hunting times and even possible kill locations.  Our baiting has paid off with one bait taken last night.  Unbelievably, the motion sensor camera did not take a single picture!  The cat was not happy to eat in the tree and broke the nylon rope in 2 pieces, thereby dislodging the bait.  I must say that it was an old rope which was frayed due to the numerous times it has been used as an anchor for bait.

I found Caroline coming back from the hunt this morning and it seems she was unsuccessful.  She followed the main road back to the vicinity of where she hid the cubs, scent marking along the way, but then she threw me a curve-ball as she turned left and 90 degrees away from the second den site.  The terrain is very rough and I could not follow her in the vehicle, so I drove around and waited at the second den site.  She did not arrive after half an hour and I decided to walk to get a location on foot.  I investigated the second den site and the cubs were clearly not there and so the long and nervous walk began.  I got a very strong signal from two large boulders about 300m away from their birthplace but could not see her in the tall grass.  If that is their new den-site, it is definitely a very good one and should offer protection from the elements as well as predators.

I found fresh female leopard tracks next to the river this morning in an area that Caroline has avoided during her travels.  This is most likely the core of Matilda's cub's territory.  These tracks were also not very far from where I found yesterday's tracks, but this time they were leading in the opposite direction.  I'll put out baits later and see if we can get some camera trap pictures of the cat in question.

We had a massive rainstorm Saturday evening and I was worried about the cubs that were literally trapped within the confines of the cement dam.  I found Caroline and her cubs first thing Sunday morning where her and one cub was lying underneath a bush about 10 metres from the first denning site.  The cubs blue eyes were beautiful.  She was probably in the process of moving them as we found her a further 100-odd metres away this morning.  We did not see any cubs but assume that she moved them into the second denning site which is a Combretum tree that was pushed over by elephants.  The depression where the roots were anchored, coupled with the nice overhang the created by the roots was her den site of choice.  We did not go too close in fear of disturbing her at the new site and she was her usual relaxed self. 

The nice rains we had wiped the earth clean and our anti-poaching unit came across Houdini's fresh tracks this morning.  He was not far away from where we had to turn the game-drive vehicle around on the way back from Caroline due to some nasty muddy ditches created by the heavy rainfall, so we probably just missed him on the morning drive.  He is in the Doornhoek stream and quite close to where we found his tracks on Thursday morning.  Since Thursday he moved deeper into the reserve, following the Mkuze river downstream to where the Hlambanyathi stream enters the Mkuze river.  From here he moved back west again and was seen on Saturday morning, heading back east in the same stream.

The cubs' eyes have finally opened and although I know they are supposed to be blue in colour, the cubs are still in such deep shadow that you cannot make out any colour in their eyes at all!  That gives a total of 8 days until opening which is the same period as the cheetah cubs.  Caroline was giving the cubs a good cleaning this morning and even turned one cub onto its back to get to those hard-to-reach spots (no pun intended).  This gave me the opportunity to determine the cub's gender but it is much more difficult than I thought.  The train of thought went something like:"Yes, definitely a male..., no wait..., ja a female... but maybe, yes a male but what about......etc."  I still have no clue whether it is male or female but luckily we can authoratively say that it must be one of those options.

We've been having difficulties logging on to the site to update our blog, so we haven't posted in a while.  The cubs are 6 days old today and the one cub's eyes are starting to open.  They are only slightly open but you can see something is happening.  Its eyes will most likely be fully open by Friday.  The cheetah cubs we followed only opened their eyes from 8 days and onwards and by day 11 their eyes were fully open, although it did not seem that they registered what they were seeing.  Once the cub's eyes are open they should become slightly more active, but they are probably still too young to climb out of the cement trough they were born in.  It is interesting that Caroline has not moved them yet, but the lack of suitable denning sites in the area could account for that.  The cheetah female moved denning sites on average every 5.5 days but stayed in one very good site for a much longer period (16 days if I remember correctly).  We set up a drinking trough not far from Caroline's denning site and when she came across it she drank furiously.  The lack of water in the vicinity of her cubs coupled with the drain on her own resources as a result of lactating is making her very thirsty.  It was the first time in nearly 2 weeks that I saw her drink, but she could possibly have moved towards the river throughout the night to drink without us knowing.  Our remote download unit was sent in for repairs and should be back with us in about 2 weeks time, when I can download her activity data for March and post it on the site.

Caroline and her cubs are still in the same place she gave birth.  She really chose a difficult spot and we can only view her and the cubs through a small gap in the wall.  Initially she was not too happy with the presence of the vehicle but she quickly accepted us in the vicinity and rolled onto her side to allow the cubs easier access to drink.  Even with their eyes closed they still fight and squabble when too close to one another, especially when drinking.  Caroline's teats almost completely fill their small toothless mouths.  It almost seems as if they have grown considerably during the last 24hrs but it is probably just my imagination.  They are definitely more active though.

It seems like our earlier suspicions were confirmed.  I left Caroline yesterday afternoon and came back this morning to find her with 2 newborn cubs, born in a watering trough for an unused cement dam.  As luck would have it, I did not have a camera with me but hurried home to get all my equipment - video camera, 600mm lens, 300mm lens, two camera bodies and a whole bag full of extras.  The trip back was a tight squeeze in the front of the vehicle. 

The cubs are probably no more than 20cm in length and when not sleeping, they crawl all over their mother and make soft squeaky noises.  Caroline chose an area with low competing predator densities but the prey density is just as low, so she'll have trouble fending for herself.  The area is also neighbouring a local community and we stepped up the security to provide for 24hr protection, as the last thing we want is for the cubs to be killed by underfed dogs.  The closest water is about 3km away and we thought of installing a temporary water trough a couple of hundred meters from where she gave birth.  The cheetah female chose a similar area when she gave birth 2 years ago, with the closest water 6km away!  Photographic opportunities are limited due to the intervening grass and the only view you could have of the cubs is through a 20cm gap in the cement wall but it was just such a priviledge to have seen them. 

I can't wait until they start moving around actively.

As you can probably judge by the caption, Caroline is doing very well for herself.  I found her this morning with yet another warthog kill, this after she left her other kill only 2 days ago.  She has not even moved more than a kilometer from where I found her yesterday morning, but most likely made the kill this morning.  She was definitely not that hungry and was fast asleep next to her kill, her belly bulging and the warthog barely touched.  It seems that she has perfected the art of ambushing pigs, and her "lazy" hunting method is paying off dramatically.  Unfortunately when you come across fat cats such as this one, they tend be lying around and doing more or less nothing.  She fell asleep almost immediately after I arrived, and will probably spend the next day or 2 in the vicinity of the kill.

After last weeks wild leopard sightings, this week has been quiet.  We set up a bait in an area where the other leopards (Houdini and Matilda's cub) were spending some time, but only had a brief visit by one of the cats (Matilda's cub) last week Tuesday, and Houdini was seen that same evening heading back west.  The river is flowing quite strongly which probably accounts for the cats not using the normally drier banks as a traversing route, but prefer to use adjacent game trails.  It was with perserverance that the snail reached the Ark so we'll just continue baiting until we receive our trapping permit, which should be within the next week or 2.  The new GPS collars are lying all shiny in our dining room and I can't wait to start getting some data on the other cats.

Caroline has moved west along the river and we saw yesterday that she somehow managed to injure herself.  She could not walk properly and the problem seems to be with her right front paw.  We noticed what looked like a small cut just behind the main pad and have no idea about the extent of the injury.  We decided to feed her so that she can give the paw some rest and recover faster but when we returned this morning with an impala rump she had already caught and killed a warthog herself, and had no inlination to feed off the impala I tied up a tree.  All that bushwacking and tree climbing for nothing...  The area she chose to rest in is adjacent to a very busy game trial, so if she stays there she'll most likely catch again soon.

The weather is still dark,cold and drizzly after the weekends rain.  Caroline moved north a kilometer or two and I found her underneath an Acacia tortilis tree with a young warthog she caught.  I obviously missed the kill by a few minutes - again...  She only started feeding on the piglet when I arrived and the warthog sow with two remaining piglets I saw close by were probably the focus of her attention a few minutes ago.  Caroline is as round as a leopard can be and seems to be in very good health. 

We made an effort to determine the whereabouts of the other cats whose tracks we found in the river over the weekend.  It seems that Houdini and Matilda's cub were in close proximity to one another but our trapping effort has as of yet not been successful.  The young female's tracks were found this morning a kilometer upstream from where the trap was set, and it seems that she is heading in that direction.  However, she is very wary of traps and has proven to be a difficult cat to catch.  Houdini's fresh tracks were found in the Hlambanyathi stream, heading west and away from our trapping area.  He should be back within a week or so and maybe we can get him collared quite soon, as he seems to have no fear for the cage traps we are using.  That is, unless he doesn't pull out one of his tricks to just simply disappear out of a trap.  The current trap we are using has been modified, so once a cat is inside there is no chance of it lifting the cage door, or at least, so we believe.  We'll be putting out some camera traps again to see what is happening in Matilda's former territory as we haven't seen any activity in that area for a long time, although Houdini still ventures there on some days.

We found an area where Houdini and Matilda's cub are interacting in.  Their tracks are littered across the dry riverbed and we set up a cage trap in order to collar the cats.  I've got GPS collars for both of them and it should only be a matter of time before we get one, if we persist in trapping of course.  I fed Caroline a full impala earlier in the week, as her high fever a week ago was worrying for us.  We secured the carcass in a tree in order to find and monitor Caroline easier and find out immediately if something is wrong with her.  She has mostly been feeding at night, followed by early morning patrols in the vicinity of the carcass, scent marking along the roads.  This morning, we could smell several of the trees she scent marked when we drove past on our way to her.  Climbing out of the vehicle and smelling the trees at a leopard's spray urinating height confirmed the scent marking.  It was interesting to see how many people drove straight past her on a daily basis where she was lying in the tree, less than 15m from the road. 

Today has not been a great day.  I was looking for Steffie the whole of yesterday afternoon and only picked up a signal at 17:00.  I got close to where she was but the collar stopped broadcasting at 18:00 without seeing her.  I was very close and decided to return first thing in the morning to find her.  This morning, I found her carcass next to the river.  Chap, the vet, came over and from what we could see there were no external injuries to her body.  The cause was deemed to be either disease or snakebite.  She was still happily feeding of her last impala kill on Thursday and left the area on Saturday to head to the river, probably to have a drink after the huge meal.  According to the combined GPS and activity data, something untoward happened at 17:55 on Saturday, as her activity readings were maxed to the recordable limit which is 255 measurements in 5 minutes.  These high readings continued until 19:45 when they decreased gradually, only to pick up again at 20:25.  Thereafter they steadily decreased and she died between 20:50 and 20:55.  The activity and time period corresponds to a reaction to neurotoxic venom and the most logical explanation was that she was bitten at about 18:55 and tried to move as far away from the incident as possible, up to 19:45 when she lay down.  The high readings over this period can be due to instability on her part, with initial quick movement to get away, and unbalanced swaying starting to occur as the venom took effect.  The spike in readings at 20:25 could be the start of seizures and the gradual decline from 20:45 shows how she slowly died.  This was a very sad day for us all. 

Caroline has been acting strangely the last week or so.  She left her home range and moved very far towards the west into an area where there is no water.  Her last kill was a vervet monkey she caught 6 days ago and we have no idea when the last time was that she drank water.  Another interesting thing was that she was scent marking out of her own territory.  She came across the fenceline and started pacing up and down the line for 4 days until we decided to dart her and move her back to her own territory.  The possibility exists that she is after a male which could be on a neighbouring reserve but staying in that particular area was definetely detrimental to her health.  After moving her back and giving her a thorough examination, the vet found that she was running a high fever of 40.3 degrees C and that she was dehydrated.  We set up a drip in the veld and will be keeping a close watch on her for the next few days.  She woke up close to water where we left an impala's rump for her to eat so she shouldn't have to hunt and risk injury for the next 2 days or so.  This morning she was still next to the dam where we left her, resting in a thick clump of bush.  Her behaviour doesn't look abnormal at all and hopefully this was just a temporary issue.

Things have been hectic since coming back but we found both cats on the same day returning from the Kruger Park.  Steffie was in an area close to her old boma and release site, which by now has been removed completely.  We found her while it was still very warm and she was lying underneath a pushed-over Acacia tortilis tree.  We moved north to find Caroline and found her far away from her home range in the mountains and gorges on the western side of the reserve.  She caught a vervet monkey and was lying next to the carcass but she did not eat it, unlike Steffie who seems to have a taste for them.  Today, Steffie was hunting impala in her old boma area and after following her for about 400m she came across a bachelor herd of impala.  The antelope were quite nervous and I left her as not to disturb the hunt.  Caroline has moved south and was found on the perimeter fence bordering a tribal community.  I followed her for probably 4km as she walked along the fence, scent marking and head rubbing against conspicuous landmarks like large rocks and trees.  It seems she was following scent deposits of another leopard as she frequently knelt down to smell certain areas, and grimaced to better test the urine samples left behind.  Whether it was from a male or female I cannot say but it was interesting that she scent marked over the areas where the other cat marked.  She was still on the fenceline this afternoon so I decided to call her deeper into the reserve.  I drove ahead and called to her frequently and she duly followed the vehicle at her own pace.  We covered about 5km in 3.5 hours until I was satisfied she was far enough from the fenceline.  She took her time and stopped to have a look at all interesting things around her, like an abandoned pumping station on the river's edge.  She walked in the open door and found a shady spot to lie down on the cool concrete.  Luckily she completed her investigation of the building quite quickly and after calling her again she got up and followed me away from the fenceline.  It was quite comical to see a leopard emerging from a building though!  I found Houdini's fresh tracks in the river and if all goes well we can start trapping again tomorrow and should we get the GPS collar on him we will be able to see how the females and the dominant male spatially arrange themselves.   We ordered another spare GPS collar for a female leopard which should be here by next week.

Sorry for not having updated the blog for a while; we are currently sitting in Kruger.  We'll be back on Wednesday when I'll try and find both cats to download their activity data and post it ASAP.

From what I've heard, Caroline has moved back towards her home range and went around Hlambanyathi dam and back towards the river.  Her riverine ventures are always a treat to follow so I hope she's still there when we get back.

At last!  I picked up Steffie's VHF signal from my house and went after her this morning.  I found her about 400m away, moving back towards her release boma (which by now has been fully removed).  There was a huge herd of impala about 200m in front of her and in the road, and it was obvious that she was aware of them.  I followed her through the veld until she came to a marula tree, which she scaled and used as a lookout point.  I could see that she was hungry, and after she came down the tree I leapfrogged her and the impala to try and get a shot from her stalking towards me and the herd.  The area was very rocky and going was tough, but I finally got myself into a more or less open position.  I could not see the cat at all at this point in time as I was about 200m from her, but she was coming closer.  All of a sudden, an impala alarm call snorted to my left and the whole herd (probably about 100 strong) scattered, with the majority stampeding off to the right.  I gave her 30 seconds more and started the vehicle to move closer, when I saw a warthog coming towards me at full speed.  More warthogs scattered in front of me and then the squeals of a pig in distress pierced the early morning air.  I raced closer (at about 10kph in the rough terrain...) and then a warthog sow appeared on my left, running in the same direction.  Steffie had just scampered up a knobthorn tree with a piglet clenched in her jaws, and 3 large warthogs were milling about underneath the tree, obviously very angry at this spotted cat which just snatched a piglet from underneath their very eyes.  She did not have a good hold on the piglet, and had it by the neck and shoulder area, whilst at the same time having to navigate the thorny tree.  After a few more squeals and grunts, the larger hogs disappeared, leaving myself and the cat in the tree right next to me, struggling to maintain a good hold on her catch.  She balanced as well as she could with the piglet kicking and struggling, but blood loss was taking its toll and the pig's struggles became weaker by the minute.  After standing like this for about 20 minutes with the still (but barely) living pig in her mouth, she quickly shifted her grip and held it around the throat.  Thereafter, death was swift.  She wedged the piglet in a fork in the tree and moved away, thoroughly grooming herself and resting, as she was almost out of breath after the ordeal.  There were some beautiful marula trees in the vicinity but she kept her kill in the knobthorn and started off by licking up the blood around the bite-wound.  This was also where she started feeding and after spending nearly 3 hours with her, I left her to enjoy the rest of her meal in peace.  (Note to self - next time bring spare tapes...)

We darted Caroline today as the wound she had did not heal properly as it attracted a lot of ticks.  We found her next to the river, quite close to one of her favourite sausage trees.  We gave her a light dose of the sedative as she is a smallish cat and she was out within about seven minutes, choosing to lie down in a lovely soft-sand area in a grove of tamboti trees.  The wound seems to have healed properly but the area attracted a lot of bont ticks (probably about 30 concentrated on the same patch).  Whilst she was down we also plugged her collar into a laptop and adjusted her UHF receiver time to start earlier and end later, as this feature can not be adjusted remotely.  She woke up again after about 3 hours and we left her as she moved back into the bush, albeit a bit groggy.

I did not see Caroline this morning as she was in an inaccessible area, but returned this afternoon to find her resting in the shade of a common spike thorn.  I am constantly amazed at how well camouflaged these cats are, as the area she is in has hardly any grass cover, and still it took me a good few minutes to see her.  After some grooming, she got up and started moving west and in an up-stream direction alongside the river.  As she moved, she scent marked against the trunks of some umbrella thorns several times, and then suddenly crouched down into hunting mode.  Her target was a lone impala ram, but she only stalked for about 3m before the ram saw her and she gave up the hunt.  The impala snorted his alarm call and boldly walked up towards the leopard, which then turned around and headed into the thicker riverine forest where I could not follow anymore.  If all goes well she'll catch something tonight and hopefully be in an area accessible by vehicle.

Steffie made a kill through the night.  This was her first impala kill in about 4 months.  We tracked her to the same area where I saw the first live leopard kill on the reserve, on the 27th of January.  The area consists of clumps of Acacia tortilis, A. nilotica and some Gymnosporia bushes with more open areas in between (just large enough spaces to accommodate the vehicle).  This is obviously a perfect area for ambush hunts and is most likely what happened in this case. 

We were looking for the cat, but could not get close due to some trees and stumps in the way.  We drove around the thicket to find an entrance on the other side, when we came across a drag mark, littered with short reddish and white hairs.  This drag mark led us straight to the carcass, dragged in underneath an old fallen-over tree.  Judging by the loud beeps emitted by the tracking system, she was very close but the grass was tall and we could not see her.  The whole carcass was covered in grass as leopards sometimes do when kills are too heavy to cache in a tree, with only one leg slightly protruding from the huge pile of grass.  Finally, she showed herself and cautiously sneaked closer.  (I suddenly thought of our previous meeting in the same place and half closed my window, just in case...)  Luckily she didn't show any aggression and after removing some grass and turning the carcass on its back, she resumed feeding.  She didn't eat much and after finishing, she covered the whole carcass with grass again.  It was great to see this instinct to cover her kill, in order to hide it from the prying eyes of vultures, which in turn could lure other predators.  I hope that she will tree this kill quite soon as we also found the tracks of a large spotted hyena in the area.  It is unbelievably hot today, with hardly a breeze blowing, and the heat should cause the carcass to rot much quicker with the accompanying smells likely to draw in the hyenas.

Both cats are currently making viewing very difficult due to the thick bush or long grass they are in.  Steffie has moved south back into a fever tree patch where she spends a considerable amount of time.  There are no roads in this area and finding her is extremely difficult.  We saw only a glimpse of her before she skulked off in the forest undergrowth, disappearing as quietly as only leopards can.  Further viewing was impossible as we could not get around or through the dense stands of trees.

Caroline has also moved slightly south and is now in a tall grass area fringing on a short-grassed open plain.  The area is teeming with prey species ranging from large flocks of guinea fowl to plenty of warthog and impala.  She was lying in this tall grass area when we found her this morning and we could literally only see a few spots through the grass.  Later, she finally got up and we followed her down a road for a few meters before heading off into some more thick stuff, seeking some shade.  The wound on her left flank looks much better but it is the area between her left front leg and body that we can not see very well.  If the wound does not improve we will have to dart her and treat the wound before the end of the week.  It does not seem to be bothering her a great deal though.

Out of interest's sake, the love-sick cheetah male is spending almost every day in the vicinity of the release boma where our new cheetah female is situated.  She seems to be accepting his presence as we found her right next to the fenceline, whereas previously she kept her distance.  Once we are convinced she familiarised herself with the area she will be released.  This should not take longer than 3 months.

I decided to follow up on the southern female again as she was obviously hunting, but came across her resting in an umbrella thorn Acacia tortilis just as the light was turning towards a beautiful shade of yellow.  I was still approaching when something caught her attention and she climbed out of the tree quite quickly.  I immediately stopped the vehicle and switched off the ignition and saw her disappear in the grass, stalking something.  Seconds later I heard a scuffle through the undergrowth and a warthog squeal.  I started driving towards the noise but seconds later a leopard came charging straight past me and up the same umbrella thorn, followed by a VERY angry grunting warthog sow.  The large warthog stopped underneath the tree, grunted a few times and then ran off.  Steffie obviously tried to tackle one of her piglets but the mother decided against that.  Both leopards are specializing in warthog piglets at the moment and I'm sure this has happened a few times without me being there.  This could also be a factor contributing to the leopards treeing kills, which only happens infrequently in KZN.  I do not know whether Steffie injured the warthog and so I sat with her until she climbed out and moved to the area where the altercation took place.  It seems like she was searching for the piglet and I followed her as she criss-crossed through the Euclea thickets, until she finally climbed into a dead tree and lay down in the stunning late afternoon light.  There she lay until it was dark.

Typed in the date and only realised now that it is Valentine's day!  Both cats are back in hunting mode and Caroline caught something last night.  Unfortunately the area she is in has dense grass standing to about 1.5m in height and I could only view her from a relative distance (5m) in this tall grass, but could not get closer to her due to the trees in my way.  The tall grass was heavily disturbed in some patches around the thicket she is in.  She has made a huge movement to the north, back to the tall grass area she was in about a month ago.  This morning she was grooming herself thoroughly as leoaprds often do after they have fed.  There was probably not a spot on her body that she did not lick clean, from her chest to the tip of her tail.

Steffie is enjoying the large patch of fever trees she is in.  This is truly a beautiful area as it consists out of a large concentration of these trees with short grass patches in between.  There are also some umbrella thorn and scented thorn in between, all occurring on dark brown clay soils.  The area is a highway for prey species heading to Clerkness dam (the only constant source of water in the south) and whilst sitting with her, warthogs came trotting past us twice.  It will only be a matter of time before Steffie will catch something; maybe even today?  I left her as the vehicle is quite conspicuous and draws the attention of prey species and therefore also drawing attention to the cat.  Currently, Steffie is the best bet to film a kill or even her everyday activity as she was busy this morning.

Today did not deliver much in terms of leopard sightings as we received a lovely new cheetah female from the National Cheetah Conservation Forum, which took up the majority of our time. 

We came across Caroline this afternoon when she moved out of the inaccessible drainage line she was in.  It is suspected that she made a kill in there and that was also why she did not react at all to us calling her in over the weekend.  We found her with the carcass I gave her on Saturday and it is clear that she only started eating it this afternoon, probably after her own catch was finished.  Steffie has moved from the fever tree patch she was in back to her boma and was lounging around in the trees.  After eating as much as she did, she was lying on a branch in a Schotia and was sleeping like a log.  She will probably remain in this sleepy state for the next 2 or 3 days when hunger will force her to start hunting again; that is unless an opportunity presents itself for an easy catch.  We have not seen any response to Caroline's marking nor Steffie's calling, but the secretive nature of leopards means that there could have been a possible interaction (or maybe even consortship) that we were not aware of.  I just cannot wait for winter when we can start trapping in earnest and to fill in these blank spaces.

I fed both cats today; not only because they were hungry but also to test their response to being called in.  Both cats were taught to respond when called in; this makes monitoring them easier and will also help us should one of them move out of the reserve.  We are aware of some of our neighbours who would not hesitate to shoot a leopard (collared or not) and some of the surrounding reserves have in the past applied for leopard hunting permits.  Inducing a response when calling them was our solution to this problem.  Steffie reacted very well to being called in, and covered a distance of about 500m within 16 minutes.  I had a helluva fright when the cat appeared from behind the vehicle as I was expecting her from my front.  Her behaviour makes it obvious that she has come into contact with some hyenas as she was constantly and nervously on the lookout for anything moving in on her position.

I left Steffie to head north towards Caroline.  By this time her VHF unit on the collar stopped broadcasting and I knew it was going to be difficult to find her in the thickets she was in.  I struggled for at least 45 minutes to call her in and then decided to visit some of her favourite haunts.  I drove through the bush in between her favourite trees, hoping to find her up there but not even the UHF communication antenna could pick up on her position.  Finally I got a signal from her collar and forced GPS acquisition.  Following the coordinates on my GPS I finally found her in a thicket next to the N2.  She did not react at all to being called in and it seems like she was full and just not in the mood investigate my annoying calling.  I could not get a good look at her so I'll head towards her tomorrow to see what she is up to.

I could not find either cat yesterday, but Steffie moved south back to the vicinity of her release boma.  It took some serious off-roading to get to her and I found her underneath an old marula tree that was pushed over by elephants.  She is looking thin and must be in a serious hunting mode.  Hopefully she'll catch something within the next 2 days. There was a huge herd of impala not very far from her with a lot of young animals that should be relatively easy targets for her.  She was not too happy with my presence but luckily didn't display any outright aggression.  After sitting with her for a couple of minutes she started relaxing and eventually decided to get some sleep whilst light rain started falling.  She was still asleep when I left her.  Caroline is still in the same area next to the river and I am hoping to catch a glimpse of her this afternoon.

Since Steffie is closest to our house, I decided to look for her first.  She has moved a kilometer or so towards the river and seems to be on the southern bank and very close the the river itself.  I tracked her to the exact opposite side where Caroline was spending her time in but she is in a deep donga in between two very steep rock faces, which is only accessible by foot (not a good idea).  Images of the cats sitting in trees on the opposite side of the river and vocalizing at one another (or intensively marking their territories) flooded my mind but alas, Caroline was not there...  This is a prey rich area with very good leopard habitat and lots of water, so she will probably spend a considerable amount of time next to the river.

Caroline has made another huge movement away from the area where she spent the last few days, right back to the thickets between the lodge and the N2.  The possibility exists that she followed the river the where she is now but that in itself is a large distance covered, especially for a female leopard (estimated distance is 6km!).  I got close to her in the thick bush but could only see some spots through the dense vegetation.  In fact, the bush is so dense that I could not download any of her GPS movements and activity data although I was not more than 10m from her! 

It is interesting to see that the cats perceive the river as a natural boundary.  Although the river is currently flowing at less that ankle-depth and is quite narrow in some areas the cats have not even tried to cross.  The situation could change in winter when we have much less flow.

Caroline is still in the vicinity of the river, close to where a cheetah male spends most of his time.  We were hoping to see some interaction between the two but had no such luck.  I found her in a relatively open area where she was actively hunting.  Unfortunately she missed another opportunity at a warthog.  The camera was rolling and I would have loved to get an "impact" shot but that should happen in time.  After missing the warthog, she headed back towards the riverine forest, scent marking as she went along.  It was quite hot and she chose a nice shady spot on some soft sand and lay down for some rest.  For a predator that needs to hunt to survive these cats sure rest a lot!

Steffie was in an inaccessible gorge quite close to our house.  We heard her rasp call at about 12:00, 15:00 and again at 18:00.  She seems to be moving towards the southern bank of the river.

We woke up to a cloudy morning accompanied by some drizzle.  Whilst following Caroline over the weekend we noticed she had an open wound underneath her front left leg and together with the vet, we went out to look for Caroline.  She was next to the river and some thick stuff, so we decided to head into the riverbed and obtain a better view from the more open side.  We found her high up in a wild fig tree Ficus sycamorous.  Unfortunately, the intervening branches and leaves made having a good look at her quite difficult.  Added to that, she was sleeping very comfortably with her left leg draped over a thick branch.  We sat like that in the drizzle, hoping for her to move but she was not inclined to move at all.  She did, however, shift her position a bit and we had a good laugh at the positions she would assume in the tree, from lying down with all fours dangling down below and even at one stage lying on her side, perfectly (and impressively) balanced on the branch.  We did manage to sneak a few peeks at the wound and concluded that it could have been a warthog that gashed her there.  This would most likely be a sow protecting a youngster.  I'll keep a look out on the wound and if the situation does turn for the worst, we will dart her and properly assess and treat the wound.  The fact that she is still climbing trees (especially such tall ones) should mean that the wound is not hindering her that much.  We'll follow up on her a bit later to see whether the male has looked her up already. 

We are still under the impression that she is in season and judging by the area she is covering, combined with her constant spray urinating, head rubbing and tree scratching, every other leopard in the vicinity is most likely aware of her condition.  According to the vet, cats secrete feline appeasement pheromone by head rubbing.  This is also commonplace in lions meeting one another after a period of absence, and seen in the characteristic head rubbing of leopard or lion females on a male before copulation.  Let's hope Houdini catches up on these smells quite quickly.

We just finished our supper outside when Steffie called right next to our house.  She was probably not more than 300m away.  We went out to find her but could not get into the area we thought she was in due to the rocky terrain, but it was still nice to hear the cat confirm her presence, perhaps just to let us know she is still here. 

We decided to follow Caroline into the evening as she was displaying some interesting behaviour and we were hoping she'd attract a male with all her scent marking.  She made a huge movement to the west and we found her along the Mkuze river close to our western boundary.  Luckily she was moving back east again.  She was still using the roads and would walk 100m or so at a time, scent marking every 20m.  Whilst walking she disturbed many birds and animals including arrow-marked babblers which made a huge racket, a Cape eagle owl that hooted at her a few times (nice daytime sighting for us as well), francolins, vervet monkeys, blue wildebeest and perhaps even others we didn't see. It was easy to predict the route she'd follow so I placed the camera along the route and got some beautiful shots of the leopard walking straight past the camera, set for a wide-angle shot.  She must have scent marked at least 30 times during the period we followed her.  Other interesting behaviour we witnessed was tree scratching where she would stand on her hind legs, and with her front paws extended as high as possible, she would claw the bark off of trees.  Furthermore, other trees were investigated and after an intensive bout of head rubbing she'd swiftly turn around, squirt some urine and then go on to the next tree.  We also saw a failed hunting attempt as she went after three warthogs.  However, these warthogs were huge and she was the one who decided not to tackle one of them.  We left her at dark and were very happy about the time we could spend with her and the ease with which it was accomplished.

I spent a delighful but just as confusing morning with Caroline.  She has moved upstream along the Mkuze river and turned north, following a drainage line that runs past the lodge.  Squeezing through a narrow game path, I finally managed to get very close to her, although I could not see her at all due to the surrounding Euclea thickets.  I waited for a considerable time for her to make her appearance, as I expected her to be following the particular game trial I was parked on.  I do not know what happened, but suddenly she came bolting out of the thickets and ran straight past the driver's door.  She carried on for another 100m or so, running down the game path and then turned west, still running.  I followed as best as I could but only caught up with her after she ran 400m or so!  Interesting behaviour - maybe she was startled by a large warthog or maybe even another leopard - who knows?  She was in a great hurry to get somewhere, not always keeping to the road and criss-crossing the area.  She again startled some nyala, whose barks resounded through the thickets, but she showed no interest in them.  After losing her (yet again) and heading back to the road I managed to track her down (very easy as by now she was walking in the road).  I followed at a respectable distance, not wanting to disturb her with my presence.  She was walking from bush to bush, scent marking by spray urinating every 20m or so.  Finally, I got that on tape!  After she moved on a bit, I approached the tree where I saw her spray first.  Her urine had a thick consistency and smelled like buttered popcorn, obviously with a tinge of ammonia.  It is possible that she may have heard another leopard call and immediately ran to investigate, which would explain the criss-crossing movements and intensive territorial marking but this is only a guess.  I was next to her when it happened but heard nothing.  She finally got to a nice shady spot where she flopped down and proceeded grooing herself.  By now she probably traveled about 1.5 km.  After sitting with her for a while she decided that she's had enough of my company and moved off into some thickets, again scent-marking as she went.

Steffie made a large movement back towards her original release site and was found relaxing in a weeping boer bean Schotia brachypetala.  I could hardly see her as she was obscured by heavy foliage and the deep donga next to which the tree grows made it impossible to get a good view.  She seemed to be in good health and I left her to go find Caroline.

Caroline is still in the same area next to the river.  When I found her this morning she probably just chased some prey animal as she was lying down in a game trial and panting heavily.  After about 10 minutes of panting and resting she got up and walked back to the large Kigelia she was in yesterday.  She again spooked some nyala on the way there and their barks resounded through the riverine forest as they followed her at a safe distance.  Her tail was held high again, seeming to say to the nyalas: "Yes, here I am".  According to her GPS data, she seems to enjoy that particular tree and when she arrived there she promptly leaped in, found a comfortable branch and fell asleep almost immediately.  She was still sleeping when I left her half an hour later.

This is the first blog entry for our newly created website.  Using the blog, we will update you on the latest happenings regarding the leopard project, so this will include not only interesting sightings but also discuss our progress in tracking down and collaring two more cats, Houdini and Matilda's cub.  Trapping will only resume later in the year (probably from March) as the bait we use will last longer and the remaining young impala and warthog have grown in size (and are much quicker) so the leopards will likely be more hungry more often.

We had quite a comical moment with Steffie this morning.  She is close to a fever tree lined drainage line, with thick clumps of other Acacia and Gymnosporia trees.  The grass underneath and between these thickets are about a meter in height, so seeing anything is quite difficult.  I maneuvred the vehicle in between two of these thickets when I noticed the grass move, about 7 meters from the vehicle.  Using binoculars, the leopard sighting was confirmed (quite literally a few spots through the grass) but then all of a sudden she charged!  The accompanying growl made me close my window in record time as the cat skidded to a halt right next to the driver's door.  There she lay down and glared at me through the window, my heart racing. 

Eventually she got up and moved around the vehicle to my left and behind a thick clump of grass.  I started the motor and proceeded to reverse in order to obtain a better view of the cat.  This prompted her to move to where the vehicle was parked seconds ago.  Interesting behaviour?  In fact, I did not see her warthog kill in the long grass and parked my vehicle exactly on top of it!  No wonder she was so unhappy with me!  Lesson learnt - don't mess with a leopards kill!