Wilderness King's Pool Relief Guest Experience Manager Nuno Cardoso reports on a thrilling encounter with a male and female lion on the Linyanti Concession…
Yesterday morning I went out with Baz from our environmental team to conduct a bird transect, identifying birds for research purposes. We approached a waterhole near King's Pool around 7 am and climbed out of the vehicle to look for birds.
As I was repositioning I looked over to the bushes around the water and saw a male lion about 40 metres away, looking straight at me. I checked through my binoculars and quickly spotted a female coming behind him. We hopped back onto the vehicle and went for a closer look, discovering a fresh female buffalo carcass, possibly killed just an hour before.
We called in the guides and left after spending some time watching the cats sleeping. Later that morning I took some other guests to the waterhole, as the spot is just a two-minute drive from camp. On arrival we found the lions sleeping in the shade, but surprisingly, the lioness was holding a baby warthog which appeared to have just been caught. We watched her eat about half of it until the male went in and took the rest for himself. Later in the afternoon we watched them again, this time (finally) feeding on the buffalo.
Through the night and the following day lots of action happened, with hyaena and leopard coming around to check, and ending with the big male lion coming into camp, right by Tent 1, to have a drink from the fresh water of the Linyanti River.
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