Cheetahs in Mountain Zebra National Park

[Toko]

Update on cheetah cubs here: The Mountain Zebra National Park’s seven cheetah cubs are a few months old now and they’re all doing well.

[nan]

superb news... I have to have a look at this park

[Mel]

November 2014

Regarding our Cheetah-tracking in 2014, the date was November 17 and we went out with Charl. At the time there was a mother named Nixi (she subsequently was said to have died from a snake bite) that had four 'teenagers', and we were lucky enough to get quite close to them. Here are a few photos from that excursion:









Thank you for giving me the opportunity to take a trip down Memory Lane.

Kind regards,

Adam

[Mel]

November 2015

We were up early on our last morning in the park and ready to hopefully find some cheetah
The kids are unfortunately not yet old enough to go tracking, so S kindly let me go with my mother whilst she took the kids and the rest of the grandparents off on a drive.

Dan was our guide again, and he explained that we would be aiming to find Angela who was very relaxed about people approaching on foot. Samara on the other hand had cubs and was generally very quick to run away so wouldn't be suitable for the 'older generation'

Both of these cheetah have tracking collars which provides a GPS location every 4 hours, and allows radio location within a certain range. Based on where they had been located, we would see if there was any sign of Samara but concentrate on finding Angela.

[...]

We knew the area where Samara had been hiding quite well from a number of our 4x4 drives, but there had never been any sign of her. Fortunately Dan's eyes were better than ours, and he pointed out where she was sitting far off on a hillside. 3 other little heads were in view as well



It didn't take long and she got up and disappeared over the brow of the hill, so we took a drive further round the hillside to see if we could see her again. After driving back and forth she eventually appeared on the ridge line again, but this time no sign of the cubs.... where could they have gone



She then got up and wandered down to the shade of a bush and that's where the cubs were hiding





A short while later they were up again with the cubs trundling up the hillside.







Samara decided that was enough of a show for one day and led her little ones up over the hill and out of sight.



It was fantastic to see them despite the distance away... also nice that they were found with eyesight rather than a radio transmitter

[Mel]

July 2016

We left the aardwolf to its rest and drove round towards the cars that we had seen before. Now what was it that they were looking at?

It was all smiles in our car, and we had to scan for a bit once we reached the other cars to see what people were looking at. A small head popped up after a while



We couldn't believe our luck - lion, aardwolf and now cheetah!!

There were at most 6 cars at the sighting, and as one of them left they told us that there had been 3 cheetah visible at one point. When we got clearer views, we could see that it was just a youngster.





We presumed that we must be looking at one of Samara's cubs. She was the cheetah we had seen on our last visit - but only from a distance. After a while another head appeared



Shortly afterwards, 4 heads came into view



But as they started moving, they were all clearly about the same age - maybe 10 to 12 months old. This had us totally confused... we knew about Samara's 3 cubs and we also knew that another cheetah had 2 newborn cubs... so who were these guys???







TBC

[Mel]

July 2016

As the cheetah started to get up and move they were clearly calling for mom - presumably she was off hunting somewhere nearby but we never saw her. Here's a short video of the youngsters calling

https://youtu.be/d_oL0lgd3BI

We spent the next 45 minutes admiring these beautiful cats and as the sun started sinking lower on the horizon they were painted in some incredible colours. Words don't really do justice to the sighting... instead I'm simply going to post rather a lot of photos and hopefully you'll get something of the experience

[Mel]

July 2016

The 4 siblings then crossed the road and were lit up by the setting sun







With the landscape turning pink and purple, this was probably my favourite photo as the light started to fade



In a matter of minutes the light was gone and we needed to return to the camp so we said goodbye to the cheetah and hoped that they would find their mom quickly

[...]

TBC

[Flutterby]

[Lisbeth]

Thank you to our resident cheetah expert

[Richprins]

SANParks Mountain Zebra
@SANParksMZNP
Two cheetah cubs in Mountain Zebra National Park.