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Kings Pool Camp – March 2014

March 7, 2014 Southern Africa Bush Tails

Weather and Landscape 
Kings Pool received approximately 180mm of rain during January 2014 and on many occasions if you closed your eyes you might be forgiven for thinking that you were in the British Isles somewhere!

Wildlife 
The Linyanti is lusciously green due to all the rain we’ve been having, making wildlife spotting fairly challenging. But having said that, we’ve had some amazing sightings of leopard and wild dog. But surely first prize must go to our hyaena and cubs, which we found at their den… really, to say they are adorable is an understatement!

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The lions of the Linyanti have been rather quiet this month, but we have been compensated well with the return of the majestic grey giant, the elephant. We have been lucky to see them cross right in front of camp from Namibia , and while it’s not every day we see them, it’s good to know that they are coming back to the area.

We also saw what has to be one of the Linyanti’s most beautiful and rare antelopes, the roan. Rikki – Kings Pool Camp’s Food and Beverage Manager – also had the pleasure of seeing the rare sable antelope on the airstrip while picking up freight. So indeed, while all these beautiful antelope species are rarely seen, they do exist.

Our leopard sightings, while not frequent, have proven to be the ‘cat of the month’ at Kings Pool, and our guides and guests were lucky enough to see our female Slender and her cub on an impala kill.

With our new state-of-the-art Land Rover game viewers, the guides have even managed to finally see the elusive male leopard of our area – usually to his surprise, as the engines are so quiet he doesn’t even hear them coming!

The always energetic wild dog have been offering guests amazing displays of their behaviour. We were lucky again this month to see the LTC pack of 18 doing, I guess you could call it, water aerobics, while the red lechwe looked on in fear. We have also seen some of the Kings Pool pack of eight, but not all together, and while we did see four of the eight and get some photos of them, it would have been nice to confirm that they were all still together, so fingers crossed for next month that we will see all eight of them.

Now for my favourite mammal of all, the hippo – they have been having lots of fun in the oxbow lake in front of camp and have been using our hippo highways in the evenings and early mornings to come onto land and then to return back to the safety of the water.

Birds and Birding 
For all the birders visiting Kings Pool, it’s certainly been a splendid month. We have seen a wide variety of birds, including the black cuckoo, woodland kingfisher, crested barbet and wood owl, while the riverside area has offered wonderful sightings of goliath heron, comb duck, pied kingfisher, open-billed stork, and the beautiful African jacana, as well as many, many more.