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Ivory Tree Blog

Rare carnivores (8 Jan 09)

We left for the evening game drive hoping to see some of Pilanesberg's big cats. A surprise awaited us however at Kgabo/Korwe junction as we came across one of the smaller cat species that occurs in the park. A female serval was walking in the grass next to the road seemingly oblivious to our presence. The female however seemed very interested in something else which we could not determine at the time. We decided to stick around to find out what this serval was up to...

After about 2 minutes, she jumped into the air and disappeared into the grass for about a second, just to reappear with a big rat in her mouth! As if feeling really proud about her catch, she then walked down the road with her kill for about 100 m. As she went off the road we saw that she met up with another serval which turned out to be her youngster! She then gave the rat to her youngster who thoroughly enjoyed its meal!

The excitement of the serval sighting left us with great joy as we set off to look for the big cats. Unfortunately the cats evaded us but we did have two very beautiful brown hyena sightings! Serval and brown hyena are animals that you don't see very often and we came back to the lodge with big smiles on our faces after having seen a fantastic sighting of a breeding herd of elephant aswell.

Charl Kemp
Ranger
Ivory Tree Game Lodge