Safari & Company - Safari Adventures Custom Designed

Mombo & Duba Plains news - Green Season

Location:  Okavango Delta
Date:  January 2009
Observers: Gregg Hughes, Matt Copham
An exceptional wildlife safari recently took in the Okavango Delta camps of Mombo and Duba Plains. The wildlife sightings and interactions we saw left us simply in awe and unsure what to expect next.
Duba Plains Camp is a small, intimate camp on a vast concession that plays host to endless lion and buffalo battles that is very unique to the area. We saw phenomenal lion interaction with the introduction of a new male to the Tsaro females. With the demise of the formidable Duba Boys last year, a new male has entered the fold and in the process of mating with the rather disjointed nine Tsaro females. On the last morning of our stay we saw seven of them trailing the buffalo herd when the new male showed up. He had some warm greetings from two of the females who appeared to be lactating hidden cubs. The others were a bit icy and then from nowhere the male lion bolted into the middle of a group of these females who appeared to be defending one of the last remaining cubs of the Duba Males (interestingly the two-year-old subadult female). It was incredible to see a full grown male lion spring all fours off the ground to intimidate this young female and then chase her full tilt across the floodplain roaring incessantly trailed by some of the other females. We did not see any interaction with the wily old buffalo here but this certainly was an awesome lion-on-lion interaction.
From Duba Plains, the one-hour scenic helicopter transfer to Mombo Camp was one of the best I have ever been on and our pilot Annie is a very accomplished game-sensitive pilot. Her manoeuvring around elephants was awesome with minimal disturbance to the herd.
Mombo Camp was pure wildlife intensity, with the famous female leopard Legadema bringing down an adult female impala on the first afternoon drive right behind our safari vehicle. It appeared as if there were wild dogs in the area as the impala ran into our leopard sighting with their distinctive rocking/fleeing motion. Legadema caught the impala mid-air and brought it down on its head, instantly killing it without a sound. She quickly opened up the flank, drank down some blood and took a few mouthfuls of flesh before abandoning the carcass at dusk. This was rather strange behaviour but she was just outside her core territory and still has the liability of raising one-year-old twins. The next day, mid-afternoon, Legadema was seen catching and paralysing a baby warthog and then leaving it to her year-old cub to finish the kill and learn some well-needed skills. The young leopard was however chased down and tackled by the irate mother warthog before she could escape up a flimsy Acacia tree!
The squealing warthogs also brought in two lionesses that narrowly missed catching the mother warthog but this distraction enabled the young leopard to retrieve the kill and take it high into a tree. Legadema herself had taken flight from the lions in the meantime and scaled up a baobab tree, to look anxiously on as the lionesses tried one at a time to climb the small acacia. Luckily they soon got bored and wondered off to kill two other warthogs not too far away. After all this drama the young leopard finally got to enjoy her well-earned spoils.
We thought the action was all over for this trip, until the final morning when four young male lions had brought down a buffalo that night and we arrived at first light to see 40 spotted hyaenas take over the kill. The four lions returned not long after and started a tug of war with the buffalo carcass. After much gnashing of teeth and chasing of hyaena they finally surrendered to the lions, which finished off the remains of the buffalo. Awesome way to end an amazing safari!

-Gregg Hughes-
Images by Matt Copham