I was up and showering before our 5.25 am call, this was followed by breakfast and away by 6am. Under cloudy skies and much cooler conditions than yesterday we were soon following lion tracks - they must have recently drank in our pan - we followed them all the way back to a dead elephant they had been eating. The young male and female slumped in the road so we stopped and watched them - the female went off round the corner while the male went towards the very whiffy carcass - we saw him climb on it but he clearly wasn't too hungry as with a fat belly he walked off to join his sister on a mound - as we drove round we saw two other males - one being another brother the other the pride male.....all full and resting. ( We later found out that the elephant had been poached but the poachers had been caught in a hunting area and handed over to the National Park rangers - lucky for them as the parks policy is 'shoot first questions second'!)
After morning tea with the lions we
visited the pan from last night as we arrived female eland ran off and a big bull trotted off - only to eventually return when he was really sure he was safe, licking his lips (today's photo) as we came to the water - the females remained in the bushes and didn't brave another drink.
As we passed another pan - we watched, buffalo run as we approached, albeit one male initially stood his ground he ran when he realised all his mates had left him, and young warthogs running to the water then back again until they plucked up the courage to finally go for a drink.
In the afternoon - the sun came out and we had bright blue sky's - so as we left to go to the dog den I got nice pictures of elephant and a hammerkop at our pan. At the den we caught glimpses of the dogs as they moved around the den - we also saw several puppies through the thick undergrowth, probably no more than a month old. We missed the adults going hunting as they left via the back door - so we headed off to where we thought they might hunt - we saw lots of prey but no dogs. We did however see what we thought was a lone female lioness which turned out to be 7 lionesses and 2 males - 3 females we very interested in us and seemed to be stalking the vehicle. Their behaviour seemed unusually menacing so we hightailed back to camp - and hoped they might come to the water hole to see us! This pride haven't been seen in the area before so we could have some interesting dynamics if they meet the resident pride!
We had two camp firsts - seeing the new pride and the wild dog pups - overall a really interesting day.