South Luangwa NP, Zambia - Day 4

A big bull enters the river for a morning drink.

Buoyed by the fantastic dog sightings we’d had the day before, we were off at 5.30 am from our campsite to get to the gate just before 6am as usual.  Our plan was to go back to the same area that the dogs had been just in case for some reason they were still there.  It was a long shot, but it was also where we’d seen the leopard cub so it seemed like as good a place as any.

We got the open area of Wamilombe but as expected the dogs were long gone, especially if the relaxed antelope and warthogs were anything to go by.  A bit disappointed but not surprised, we decided to wind our way back along the river slowly as we’d driven straight to the open area.  We caught a nice sighting of an African fish eagle posing on the edge of the cliff, a different perspective with the river in the background.  

The legend of river checks out the terrain. 

Carrying on, we came around a corner and spotted 2 game drive vehicles stopped and the reason soon became obvious - leopard!  She was lying in the grass, half hidden in the brush and completely still while ignoring the cars.  We of course immediately stopped with excitement - we may not have found the dogs, but a spotted cat was a fantastic prize! 

Unfortunately, she had her back to us, so we couldn’t see her face - in fact, she was hardly moving except for when a few helmeted guineafowls started shouting and she turned to look at them facing our way for a moment.

We soon worked out what the target of her laser focus was - a sounder of warthogs.  There were a couple of adults and a bunch of young piglets browsing nearby.  We could only catch glimpses of them through the bush but she was definitely keeping a close eye on them while they were completely oblivious to her.  

For almost half an hour she hardly moved a muscle and we watched intently but quietly, just like the other 2 vehicles.  Everyone was waiting to see what would unfold, with the only ones totally unaware being the warthogs.

And then the pigs made a mistake…

The warthogs appeared to be moving off and the adult warthogs turned away from the leopard.  In a shot, she was off and bounding towards the pigs, not at full speed but she covered the distance a lot quicker than we anticipated.  

And pandemonium ensued! Suddenly there were pigs running everywhere!  We didn’t realise how many small ones there were but suddenly 2 of them were running towards us like they wanted to jump into the car!  We could see at least another 4 more piglets running in all directions and so were the adults.  

In a flash the Leopard was up a tree with a piglet. 

We couldn’t see the leopard but it seemed like the other vehicles could because they suddenly started up and moved past us.  We quickly turned around and followed, unsure of where the action was or if there was any - had the leopard been successful or not? We didn’t know, but all was revealed soon enough.

Open season on piglets!

As we round the corner, we found one of the safari vehicles right next to a tree.  We couldn’t see a leopard, but surprisingly one of the adult warthogs was lying at the base of the tree.  We could see that she was still alive as she was flailing around, but didn’t seem to have any injury and definitely no leopard on her.  Where was the cat?

But soon we saw as we got up to the other vehicle the scene was revealed - the leopard was in the bottom fork of the tree with a warthog baby in her mouth, just standing there!  We quickly positioned ourself so that we had a good view of her while staying out of the way of the other car.

Looks a proud cat with the prize.

For a while, she just stood there with her piglet prize in her mouth, while the other warthog just lay there.  We couldn’t figure out what the problem was with the mother warthog, but we eventually found out that the mother had chased after the leopard after she had grabbed the baby.  The leopard had jumped up into the tree, the warthog hadn’t been able to change direction in time and had gone headfirst into the tree, probably breaking her neck.  All this we didn’t know yet, so were really baffled as to why this warthog was just lying there, although we did suspect she had been incapacitated but wasn’t sure how.

For about 5 minutes she just stood in the fork of the tree holding the dead piglet in her mouth, but evevntually she must have decided it was time to move, and she jumped down onto the ground again.  

Didn't want to eat in the tree. 

Assuming she was just going to settle down and eat right there, we moved slightly ahead to get a better view.  But we were wrong, and instead she decided to walk straight towards us with the piglet before crossing right in front of our car and sauntering off to find a different bush to enjoy her breakfast. 

She spent the next 15 minutes trying to figure out which place was the best to have her meal before she settled on a particularly inaccessible spot to start eating.  In all of this there were still only the original 3 vehicles - us and the 2 game driver vehicles - to witness the action and so we took turns to get a view of her, since she’d positioned herself that only one car at a time could see her clearly.  

As luck would have it, when it was our turn she decided to move, so we only got a few shots of her crunching on the carcass before she retreated deeper into the scrub.  Of course, when we moved off and let one of the other cars in, she came back to the same place offering them a great view!  I think she had it in for us…

We hadn’t forgotten about the adult warthog who was still incapacitated at the base of the tree about 20 meters away.  And neither had the leopard it turned out.  About an hour later, after she had eaten enough of her piglet meal, she got up and slowly started heading towards the tree.   

We assumed that she was going back to the warthog so we drove around and positioned ourselves where we thought she would stop.  A bit of panic when she stopped on the other side of the tree and we were second guessing our position for a moment, but then she went back to our script and came right up to the warthog and in front of us.

Starters done, getting ready for the main meal. 

It was a gruesome, yet unique scene for the next half an hour and we watched with morbid fascination.  The warthog unfortunately was still alive but unable to get up, so the leopard cautiously approached her even jumping back when the legs started flailing.  But the cat soon realised that the pig was no longer a threat and unfortunately that meant a very painful and messy end for the warthog.

The eyes of the warthog says it all - this was going to be ugly. 

Instead of killing it as you’d expect a leopard to do, she instead started eating the poor warthog alive.  While the pig flailed every now and then, she hardly made a sound - either in resignation at her fate or the adrenaline had numbed her pain.

  

The leopard never went for the throat but straight for the heart. 

At one stage the leopard straddled the pig to turn her from her side to her back and started biting through the skin to access her heart.  It was a pretty gruesome sighting and unfortunately the warthog did not die quickly, but held on for quite a while before succumbing to the loss of blood.  

And the leopard stopped eating soon after that - it was as though she wanted to eat the nutritious heart while it was still beating.  She spent about half an hour eating at the warthog, but considering the piglet she had eaten earlier, she had probably had her fill and decided to rest up for the rest of the morning after grooming herself for a bit.

The leopard went for the internal organs only.

She slowly ambled off in the direction of the where she had left the piglet carcass but instead of going back to it she jumped up into another tree, hanging around for a moment, before jumping down again and laying at the base.  

Clean up after a job well done.

By now a couple of other cars had joined us finally, but it seemed that she was done for the morning and meandered slowly into the bush.  She could still see her a bit and for those tourists arriving late it was still a leopard sighting, but considering what we had seen, we left her speechless as to what had transpired the last couple of hours.  It was hands down, one of the most intense sightings we’d ever had in the bush!  

And to think that for the majority of it there were only 3 cars.  And one of those cars had actually left while she had been devouring the piglet so had missed a lot of the adult warthog kill.  We think that some of the tourists were a bit squemish and didn’t want to witness the killing, especially when we noticed that one of the women in the car was knitting rather than watching a leopard kill!

It was only 9 o’clock but we knew that we weren’t going to see anything else exciting - lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same spot after all - so we slowly meandered around the area before it was midday and time to head for lunch.

We did manage to see something quite unusual - a baby albino baboon with the rest of the troop hanging at one of the lagoons.  He was a bit too far away for close up shots, but we don’t often see albino animals in the wild, so we were hoping to catch him when he was closer at a later stage - after all, he’s very noticeable!

The albino baby baboon.

One thing that had puzzled us was why there were so few vehicles at the leopard kill.  While we understood that during the hunt, the guided vehicles wouldn’t have radioed anyone else in case they spoilt it, even for the hour after we hardly saw any vehicles drive past.  In fact one of the only cars we had seen were our neighbours in the campsite, also self-drivers who didn’t even notice us parked watching a leopard eat a piglet ;)  Only much later did 2 other cars join us but it still seemed suspiciously quiet for a leopard sighting.

And we found out why when we got back to the camp for lunch and went to have a cold beer at the bar.  The resident guide told us that there had been a male lion that had made a buffalo kill on his own on the banks of the Luangwa river in the morning, so most of the cars had been there.  Aah, that explained that… and it gave us a plan for the afternoon.

The river stands, Wildlife camp. 

Another very hot midday spent in the shade of our boma at the campsite.  We were lucky enough to work out that the camp could actually provide us with ice after searching fruitlessly in the very small Mfuwe town.  The fact that we could find ice made life a lot easier for us. Besides keeping our beer and wine cold, it allowed us to keep our food cool.  We had a plan for eating dry food in case we couldn’t find ice, but the fact that we could was a pleasant surprise.  Thanks Wildlife Camp!

Armed with the buffalo kill knowledge, we decided to head there in the afternoon.  It was on the eastern side at Luangwa Wafwa, the area we’d been searching with no luck - it seemed that the day we didn’t go, it went and produced something special!  (But in our opinion, still not as special as our sighting and since it happened at the same time, we were happy to have seen ours instead)

Hooded vultures check out leftovers at the lion kill.

Now it was a matter of finding the buffalo carcass and hopefully the male lion nearby.  It didn’t take us long to work out where the carcass since the telltale sign was there - vultures. It was in a really nice open area on the sandy bank and would have been a great sighting in the morning, but now there was nothing but half a dead buffalo, and some white-backed and hooded vultures, along with a couple of Marabou storks.

Heading further down the road, we found a filming vehicle and close by to them was the lion, although you could hardly see him as he was sleeping under a small tree out of sight.  The film crew told us that he’d taken down the buffalo in the morning and then been chasing the vultures away from his kill, but was obviously full and had given up settling for an afternoon snooze instead.

We hung around for a while even getting hopeful when a young elephant seemed to be heading towards the lion, but he soon veered off to the river and we decided to give up on the lion for the afternoon.  It was so hot that by the time it was cool enough for him to get up it would be too late for us.  So we cut our losses and headed back to the bee-eater colony which was near to where we had left the leopard.  We came across our camp’s vehicle and the tourists let us know that the leopard was still around, but deep in the bush so the sighting was extremely poor.  We decided not to even attempt trying to get a look, it didn’t seem worth it considering what we’d seen the morning.

The Carmine bee-eater colony was in sun this evening.

We did however catch the same sounder of warthogs that had lost 2 of their members this morning!  There were still about 7 piglets and a couple of young adults or helpers.  We’re uncertain as to whether they would survive now that the big mother was gone, but we can only hope that they have survived.  In the meantime, the adult warthog carcass was still there in the same state that we’d left it, so nothing had come to eat it, which was a bit surprising to us.  We had assumed that the leopard would have come back, or at least a couple of hyenas would have discovered it.

Nothing much else was happening, although we did manage to get another look at the albino baboon.  Unfortunately it was just too dark to get any good shots, so we headed out of the park at dusk and back to the campsite.

White fronted bee-eaters share the colony with the Carmine's.