The Predators of Kafue

Our group of nine flew in two light aircraft from Lusaka to Lufupa in Kafue National Park. For the last 40 minutes of the hour-long flight, we were watching the pristine wilderness unfold beneath us, and as we came into land on the grassy airstrip, we flew over first the gigantic Kafue River and then the Lufupa River – both lifeblood to the birds and mammals of the park. 

Our guides, JohnD and Gilbert, met us and chatted about the days ahead as we crossed the Kafue River by boat and jumped aboard our game-viewing vehicles for the short transfer to Musekese Camp. After settling into our rooms, we went out for a short afternoon drive, had sundowners, and returned to camp under the cover of darkness. 

We had two guides, two vehicles and two boats at our disposal so our days were busy and full of variety. Our river time was wonderful with fabulous sightings that included amongst other things half-collared, pied, giant and malachite kingfishers, African finfoot (on one occasion eating a green water snake), pygmy and white-breasted cormorant, Africa darter, nesting African skimmers, white-winged tern, osprey, a flock of 100+ common (European) swift, Pel’s fishing owl and black crake. There was a plethora of other delights that included simply sitting on the boat as the sun disappeared beneath the horizon watching the massive sky change colour with a gin and tonic in hand!

Musekese Camp is set in on a wooded ‘island’ in amongst the trees and shrubs and overlooking a beautiful watery plain that is awash with puku, and beyond it just out of view, is the mighty Kafue River. The birds scattered on the plain included spur-winged and Egyptian goose, wattled crane, wattled and blacksmiths lapwing and lots of jacanas. 

There are numerous antelope species to see in this part of the park and we had excellent sightings of puku, impala, bushbuck, oribi, reedbuck, roan, sable and the park’s ‘special’ Defassa waterbuck.

But it was the number of predator sightings that really stole the show here in Kafue. After our first evening’s drive, every other trip out (bar one) had both lion and leopard sightings, and some of the best I have ever had… and that is without mentioning the sighting of 19 wild dogs (12 adults and seven pups) that we had one morning. 

We regularly saw a coalition of two huge male lions. Both resplendent with spectacular manes, one a uniform ginger colour and the other with a dark mane and a battle-scarred face that looked every bit as though he’d fought for his now privileged position in the lion community. The rest of the pride consisted of two beautiful adult females, two subadults and two year old male ‘cubs’ that were full of youthful exuberance. 

One evening Diane (who manages Musekese) excitedly came to the dinner table as were mid-meal to tell us that the lions were in the car parking area and that JohnD and Gilbert were getting the vehicles so we could go and see them. We downed tools and jumped in the vehicles but for some reason we couldn’t find them, they’d moved off and out of sight. Instead, we were surprised to see a beautiful leopard, a female, sitting on the path between tents 4 and 5 cleaning its paws. Once we’d all seen it and taken a few pictures it sauntered off down the path and out of sight.

The following evening, we were sat at dinner on the deck when one of the waiters told us to stay still because a leopard was walking up the path to the toilet – about five metres from where we were sitting. We sat still, and the leopard walked through. 

On our final evening some of us were heading for the river for a relaxing river cruise, we were almost at the water’s edge when JohnD stopped the vehicle and casually said “well, we may not get our cruise after all”, and to our right was a female leopard in a tree panting hard. She allowed us to approach and we were able to get some wonderful photographs. We moved on round the tree and there, by a very fresh kill (a female puku) was another leopard – the cub of the leopard in the tree. It appeared to be almost fully grown, but was less than a year old, and as a young male, still had quite a lot of growing to do. It paced past the front of our vehicle to the mother leopard who by now was lying in the grass and greeted her with a head rub. He then lay down next to her and licked her ears, her eyes, her face and the back of her head. She returned the gesture. It was an intimacy amongst leopards that I have never seen before and was utterly magical to witness. 

We left them in peace, boarded our small river boat, and toasted the magic of Kafue with a gin and tonic mid-river.

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