A lioness carrying a cub in her mouth or a lion swimming the river. Those are definitely two sightings most rangers would have on their bucket list. A wonderful compromise – and I hesitate to use the word – would be what ranger Rich Ferrier and his guest Rae Jensen saw the other day – one of the Tsalala Breakaway lionesses crossing the Sand River with her two little cubs at a point just deep enough to force the youngsters to swim for a little bit.
Full of energy, the cubs play with each other before heading down to the river.
The female has been denning consistently in the Munghen drainage line a few kilometres to the west of camp. Sightings of her and her cubs have been relatively infrequent, but the cubs both appear to be very healthy.
On this particular morning they were found heading north towards the Sand River, and those in the sighting could scarcely hold their breath in anticipation as the three lions approached the water.
There are a few crossing points where the river is shallow enough to allow an easy wade-through (at least for adult lions) and where the risk of crocodile attack is minimal, and it was at the well known Taylor’s Crossing that the lioness in question chose to lead her cubs to the other side.
Little legs working hard, the cubs bravely enter the deep (for them) channel behind their ever-watchful mother.
The first little section proved the trickiest for the young lions as the water flows quickly through the only channel where their legs would not be able to touch the ground, but with their mother guiding them they managed fine and were soon powering through onto the northern bank.
Pausing to let her cubs get their breaths back, the lioness glances back at the Land-rover.
They headed west in the riverbed itself, moving between the wild date palm thickets and clumps of Phragmites reeds, with the vehicles unable to follow.
Safely across the deepest part of the stream, it just remained for the lions to climb onto the Northern bank, shake themselves dry, and fade into the undergrowth…
The curtain closed on an amazing sighting…
Written by James Tyrrell
Photographed by Rae Jensan – Londolozi Guest
we were lucky enough to be in the car too, amazing sighting!
Oh, how they have grown since we saw them on May 12! One of the great pleasures of Londolozi is being able to follow animals once you have left. The blog extends our visits from days to years and keeps us coming back.
Thank you blog team, James and Rae!
We’ll be with you next week, so excited, I do hope we will still get to see them!
Thank you for such amazing pictures, I read your blog daily.
Hey Matt, I bet you and Dana got better pictures!! Send them to Kate!
What a wonderful sighting! We’re just back in the US, at JFK, after our awesome visit to Londolozi – still #1!! Already talking about when we’ll be back….
Once again James and guest, Rae, thank you for those wonderful pics and story. It seems that more & more pics are being taken of lions with cubs or even leopards swimming in water these days than ever before, as it is a “known” fact that cats do not like to get their feet wet 🙂
Thanks for sharing!
Wonderful sighting! Thanks for sharing.
🙂
I would like to know what happened to these puppies