Addo Outings 2015

[PJL]

Quite naturally, Gina's orphaned cubs have held much of the limelight lately, but as I mentioned previously Josie gave birth to a litter about a week before Christmas. She has been very scarce (a good sign), but Mark Booysen saw her on 18th Jan at the windmill waterhole between markers 29 & 30 on the park map. He kindly allowed me to share this picture



The great news is that when you zoom in, she's showing the tell-tale brown circular marks on the fur around her teats - suggesting that she is still feeding



Only time will tell whether all four of her cubs have survived - as many of you know, the mortality rate in lion is high, with only about 20% making it to adulthood. Josie's cubs should be about 5 to 6 weeks old now, and lionesses tend to enjoy parading their offspring from about 8 weeks so hopefully there will be some sightings of them soon

[nan]

wow thank you for great news
and beautiful photos

[Lisbeth]

Thank you to Mark Booysen on behalf of AW

Hopefully Josie's cubs are still all hidden safely somewhere

Thank you Pete

[Flutterby]

Thanks PJL. Josie looks very healthy.

[PJL]

January has been extremely busy with very few chances to get to Addo, but finally this weekend we took a day trip in again. It's great to see that the Amur Falcons have arrived following their migration from south-eastern Siberia





It was one of the most memorable trips for an incredible hyena sighting. I'm still working through all the photos and will post some more in due course, but here's a sneak preview

[Lisbeth]

Beautiful amur falcon

[Toko]

[nan]

love the Falcons

[Flutterby]

Great to see the falcons are back and lovely hyena pic.

[PJL]

For a bit of a change, we entered the park at the main camp. Quite a few of the male lions have been seen up that way recently and it can also be productive for hyena sightings, though I hadn't seen any for ages. It was a quiet start to the day with nothing much to see until we came over the hill to Rooidam... there were hyenas everywhere! They had killed a kudu in the night and were still working through the scraps whilst trying to keep the jackals away. It was amazing to see so many together at one time - we counted 11 but there could have been more.