One day last week, at about 9am, we had a ton of vultures circling over the house. Then they landed in a tree behind the waterhole and waited and waited and waited. The vultures sat in the tree and did not drop to the ground or fly off in search of a thermal which suggested to us that something had made a kill close by and the vultures were waiting for their turn to feed. We were pretty sure there was a predator still on the kill and we wanted to know what it was. We checked the location of the leopards and lions online because they all have GPS tracking collars and none of them were very close to the house so we suspected [...] Read more »

It’s been ages since we had a Waterhole Wednesday. The last one was in December when it was looking pretty dry around the waterhole. Well, the rain came, everything turned green and since there has been water everywhere in the reserve the popularity of our little waterhole has dwindled a bit. However we have been thrilled to have this herd of zebra around the house recently. When we arrived here, almost three years ago, the zebra were extremely nervous and it was difficult to get a good view of them so it has been incredibly satisfying to see how tame this herd has become. We can get quite close to them without scaring them off and one has even given birth close to our home. In [...] Read more »

This week we had a couple of buffalo hanging around our waterhole. We have a lot of buffalo in the reserve, our last count was about 900 animals and they sometimes gather in herds reaching up to 150 individuals. In other areas they can occur in herds of several thousand, however, the old males are generally not part of the herd and hang out in small groups or by themselves. These two old boys came recently for a drink. They are often referred to as the bank managers of the bush because they are always looking at you like you owe them money. When these two showed up at the house I started to wonder if I had gone a little overboard with my Christmas [...] Read more »

As promised, here are a couple of photos from the leopard relocation: Our newest residents arrived safely from South Africa and seem to be settling in well. This one is being fitted with his tracking collar. Both leopards will stay in the holding boma where they can be closely monitored for about two and a half weeks before being released into the reserve. You can read more about this relocation over at the Steve Spangler Blog but I wanted to give you a sneak peek at these gorgeous felines. We are thrilled to welcome these two to the reserve, they will bring our  leopard population up to six individuals. Please check out last weeks post for some leopard facts and crafts. Read more »

While not exactly a Waterhole Wednesday, I thought I would share some news about the two leopards that will soon be relocated from South Africa to the wildlife reserve we live on here in Malawi. They were supposed to be here this past Friday and the girls and I have been busy learning about leopards while my husband prepares for their arrival. Unfortunately they have been delayed by a hold up with their release permits and will now be arriving this coming Friday. I’m a little annoyed about that because we had big plans for this weekend. There is a rugby tournament in Blantyre on Saturday that a friend will be playing in and it will have a fair like atmosphere with lots of fun [...] Read more »