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Tuningi Travel Guide
The Little 5
Rangers Journal September 2020
Hi Everybody….
Well its been one HELLUVA stretch hasn’t it !!!
The Covid pandemic has hit us all very hard with the lodge been closed down during the lockdown period until the end of August.
We have been open to the South African locals, and I must say the response from you guys has been phenomenal, with everybody in the cities tired of being couped up in the concrete jungle longing for a bit of relaxation in the bush. So they came in their droves to take the mind off the stresses which covid has bestowed upon us, and we invited them with arms wide open, and a bottle of sanitizer of course…..
The lodge has had to adhere to the strict guidelines of keeping everybody safe and you can be rest assured that we will continue to do so as the new normal sets its claws into our day to day lives here at Tuningi.
The wildlife over the last 6 months had a noticeable change in their behavior towards the vehicles whilst out on safari, in that the animals seemed to be a little more shy and unpredictable as we moved closer to them for a better view. But this soon changed back to the norm, as we could get out more often with the arrival of more and more guests.
Our previous report of the new pack of wild dogs that had denned and had puppies here in the south west of the reserve was sadly short lived, as the puppies were killed by a visit from the old pack. Much to our dismay, but I guess that is part of the dangerous way of life out here in the Bushveld of Madikwe. The adults are still around though and have been moving vast distances around the entire reserve trying to test the boundaries of their adversaries which had killed their puppies. They were seen a few times in the last month here at the lodge with one occasion resulting in an impala kill right at room 3 one evening.
Our local lion pride has been doing all kinds of strange behavior in terms of their social structure over the last month, as the Kwandwe male which dominated and ruled the northern pride has been receiving a lot of pressure from the 2 new Addo males, which seem to have grown a lot of confidence, and have attempted to remove the big guy from his post as the dominant male in that area. This resulted in Kwandwe having to fall back into the southern prides territory for some safety against the intruders. Monomoholo however did not agree too much with this uprising and joined Kwandwe on a few occasions for a revenge match, but we have yet to see any skirmishes to confirm if the move from the Addo males has been permanent. So, I don’t think that this will end here… I suspect Kwandwe and Monomoholo will return to settle the score and reclaim what is theirs. As a result, this has unsettled the females here in the south pride, and the Matlapa female with here cubs (now 8 months old) has been working on her own for the most part, and the other females spending more time on their own missions and splitting up frequently.
There is a new female leopard which has seemed to have started taking over Tsala’s old territory, which is extremely good news, and we have had her on more than a few occasions in sightings, and I must say that she has become more and more habituated to the vehicles, and we hope that she will stick around to show off her offspring soon.
Munye has been rather elusive and is still moving over large areas of the south western section of the park, but he is still in supreme condition, and we will be seeing more of him in the times to come.
The best news to come out of the lockdown was that our only remaining female cheetah … Savannah, has had 4 cubs. Yip… first time in 13 years of the 15 years I have been been here, that I have seen cheetah cubs running around here. She has chosen the south western section of the park in the Ophir plains area to raise here precious litter, and so far, they have been doing really well. She has been killing regularly, and it seems the cubs are full of energy as they bounce around after her as she leads them to places of safety before deciding to go off in search of their next meal.
We will be monitoring her situation with a close eye, and we wish here all the best as she has a mammoth task ahead of her to raise all four of the cute cubs to at least have a chance of adulthood themselves.
So I will leave you some images of some of the other game we see while out there.
PS…. REMEMBER…. WE HAVE LOTS OF FRESH AIR OUT HERE, SO GET OUT OF THE CITY AND CONTACT LORENE TO BOOK HERE FOR YOUR NEXT STAY…..
Contact us on
reservations@tuningi.co.za or call us on 011 781 5384
Wishing you plenty Bush Regards,
Gavin and the T-Team
Birding in the Madikwe Game Reserve
Special Wildlife Update !!
Hi to all our Loyal Fans !!
We Sincerely hope that you all well during this difficult time and we wish you all the best in getting through this scourge which has plagued the globe !!
Things here at the lodge have been shut down, but we have been lucky enough to be able to still get out there in the bush, and get some sort of sanity back into the system.
The best news is that our recently introduced pack of wild dogs has had 10 brand new puppies off around 4 weeks old now. The sad thing is, we have none of you guys here to share it with, so i will put a few images up as they grow up over the next couple of months.
Stay strong, and we look forward to seeing you all very soon !!
Regards,
Gavin and the T-Team 
10 Incredible Elephant Facts
African Wild Dogs
Rangers Journal February 2020
Fantastic February
Welcome to our February Rangers blog, hope you guys will enjoy the news and photos that are posted here today for you.
We had our last big beautiful rains for the year, and it was great! I will never complain about rain again as we have been in severe droughts in the past and this year was exceptionally good, and you ca see it in All new newbies that has arrived, and even with all the fabulous plant and flower growth that we got this year. Even some of our old creepy crawlies that was absent came back in full force.
In the wet times we were a bit struggling finding our favourite lion pride in the south as many roads were inaccessible due to the rain …… but when we did find them, they gave us some memorable times. Monomoholo will always give a great show when he not with his beautiful girls by signing that real African theme song of his that will always stay with you and long you back to this Magic place and Africa, we call home.
We have some exciting news! The Matlapa female from the south have produced new cubs! Three beautiful youngsters. Unfortunately, we could not get any photos of them yet, only had a quick glimpse of them as she moved them to a new hiding spot.
There are lots of water around after these good rains and have brought back some of the big buffalo herds back down in the south where grazing are also very good, not just for them but a variety of great plains animals like zebra, wildebeest, impala, red hartebeest, gemsbuck and even some eland.
The two male cheetahs have been seen very often and has given us some good sightings. The yellow tag female that lost her cubs should be coming back into heat very soon, so we are holding big thumbs. But in other news with the cheetahs is that the red tag female that is roaming more of the east of the reserve has produced 4 cubs! FIRST TIME IN 15 YEARS that Madikwe produced cheetah cubs!
The two boys seem to have a lion magnet attached to them as they are constantly running into the northern pride – luckily, they have their wits about them and avoided bad conflict with them.
We also had some great interactions with various animals like lions and elephants, which is always very interesting to watch.
We had ones again had some GREAT black rhino sightings, a lot more than we had in the past as this is a good thing that our numbers are climbing – Big up for conservation here and our Anti – Poaching
Team.
The wild dogs have been sighted quite a bit this month and gave us some great sighting of the youngsters playing around and having some fun.
Munye our resident male leopard has been spotted a few times but a little more difficult this time as the grass are extremely long – unless he climbs in a tree and make our job a little easier to spot him.
He has sometimes been like Houdini as we only find his tracks coming past the lodge and only find him on camera as he walks past our waterhole (thank you for technology).
I wish you all were here to hear Monomolo give us his best song and have the great sounds of the Madikwe bush around you.
I which you a lovely month and don’t forget to catch our next big newsletter.
Bush Regards
Ruan and The T-TEAM
Rangers Journal Festive Time
Hello again to all our fans !!
Hope you all had a great festive time, as we had here in the savannas of Madikwe.
The lodge was super busy… as always, and we had some amazing gusts join us for this very special time.
The rains have come on thick so far this year, so the bush is looking really pristine, and I myself have not seen it like this for many years now, as it seems the drought of the last 5 years has given up a little to Modjadji, the rain Queen.
Ok so this is a joint newsletter including the highlights from December and January all in one.
So let’s start with Andre’s highlights from December…
Greetings from the Tuningi team we hope you had a lovely festive season and a happy new year.
We had a huge amount of rain this month, and with all this rain magical things tend to happen in the bush. Madikwe looks like a green emerald jewel exploding with new life, by new life I mean its baby season folks.
The impalas and Blue wildebeest are giving birth, and we are having so much fun watching these little babies enjoying their new life. All the babies are bouncing and running around with youthful energy and exploring their new world. Unfortunately, with the abundance of babies around they also fall prey to the carnivores, especially the Wild dogs that’s why we have not released our 2nd pack yet.
The Wild dogs are doing great and looking very healthy. The pups are keeping up with the adults and getting fed well. With a lot of mouths to feed they need to hunt every day and we’ve been lucky to witness brilliant sightings close to our lodge this month. We cannot wait for the 2nd pack toe be released that we can have more sightings of these wonderful animals.
Monomoholo and Kwandwe the 2 male coalition still rule in the Southwest and the Northwest of the park. It is clear our local Southern pride the Mica and Jamala pride prefer the presence of Monomoholo. He is busy mating with the females so hopefully in 3 and a half months we will have cubs in the South west. Mica the old lady of the pride is busy showing her daughter Jamala X the ropes of leading the Southern pride because she is getting ready to retire as she has started to lose condition.
The 2 Cheetah brothers are a very successful hunting combination every time we see them, they tend to be full and lying in the open and posing for the camera. On a sad note the female cheetah that was pregnant lost her cubs. It’s a big shock to us and everybody in Madikwe. The cause of losing her cubs are unknown , hopefully she learned from her mistakes and it will make her a stronger cheetah and more experience mother.
Our local territorial male Leopard, Munye kept himself rare as per normal, but we managed seeing him few times. The most memorable sighting was on the 31st December stealing the show just he like he knows how. We followed him threw some nasty rocky areas and we were awarded seeing him jump into a Marula tree. A new female Leopard starting to show herself more and more. Unfortunately, she is still very skittish, and only allows us to see her from a distance. Hopefully in the future she will be more relaxed and giving us amazing sightings.
All this rain makes the heavy weights very happy, Rhino black and white, Buffalo and Elephants sightings were out of this world. The big herds of buffalo approaching a waterhole is a sight to see. The big water holes are changing into swimming pools for elephant herds, and it brings a lot of joy on our guests faces and making for some memorable sightings. It’s always a nice surprise seeing a rhino wallowing in a secretive pan full of mud keeping himself cool in the mud on warm summers day.
From me and the Tuningi team have a blessed new year full of love and enjoyment
Andre
Ok, thanks Andre for that great news from December. So let’s get into the highlights from January….
So, I will continue with the heavyweights of the bush, the elephants. They are living in “ELEPHANT HEAVEN” at the moment with all the waterholes full to the brim and all the natural mud wallows providing them with all they need to manicure their thick skins on a hot summers day.
Swimming and playing in the water is a daily chore now, as they splash around in the muddy happy holes, lowering their core body temperatures, and also just for the pure enjoyment of the mud on their skins as it sloughs off the insects which pester them this time of the year.
Who says it is only in East Africa where you can see tree-climbing lions?!
They have been sighted here in Madikwe too… Yep I witnessed on one crispy post rainy morning our southern pride females jumping into a very random bush, from which they seemed to use as a better vantage point for something they may have been hunting earlier.
Now lions are not known for their grace in trees, but they do seem to enjoy the challenge that gravity has put before them, as their 150kg bodies hang on to the bark splitting claws as they jostle for a more comfortable position.
While we are talking about the southern pride, the Mica female, the prides “rock“, has been showing signs of deterioration, as she has just gone past her 18th birthday in late November, and she is now the oldest lioness in Madikwe’s history.
She still has decent looking teeth, so as long as she can still stay with the pride on a regular basis, to eat, she will break all age records for lionesses in the wild.
Monomoholo, the dominant of the 2 males here in the south pride has also been playing “ bodyguard” for the last month, and has been seen hanging out in an area where we think 2 of the females may have cubs in the hills around the airstrip. We are keeping a beady eye on this development, and hopefully next month we will show you some images of brand new lion cubs !!
The north pride has also been taken care of by Kwandwe, and he has been seen with the females a lot this month, as he knows that Monomoholo has the south covered, but joins him at the drop of a hat, when they suspect trouble is imminent.
We had one sighting of jackal pups that pushed the cute factor through the roof. There were 3 of the little buggers, and I will leave the images to speak for themselves, as they waited on their parents to return from a hunt one morning.
The next series of images shows elephants digging up soil and eating it, at very special areas here in the bush, called mineral hotspots, and basically all of the herbivores utilise these areas to boost their systems with minerals they do not get, such as sodium, calcium, magnesium etc in the plants that they eat. The term we use for this behaviour is called “GEOPHAGIA” which means to eat soil.
This time of the year the savanna pops up among the pallet of greenery, splashes of colour in the form of wild flowers. There are hundreds of different species popping up everywhere, much to the delight of the Brown Veined White butterflies which stop by these flowers to sip some sweet nectar as they continue their epic journey from the northern cape all the way to the Indian ocean where they lay their eggs on the way and then mysteriously just die in the middle of the ocean.
The wild dog pack is doing very well, and the puppies have just been given their bi-annual rabies shots, and seem to be in tiptop condition. The adults have been killing regularly, and are keeping the ravenous pups well fed. The other pack in the holding facility will hopefully be released this month sometime, and we eagerly wait for the number of sightings to increase twofold.
I found them one morning on the northern fence line where they had killed a huge male kudu, and were in a very playful mood after filling their bellies to exploding levels. They have a very strict social structure among their ranks, and so playing is a vital part of wild dog politics.
Ok.. well that’s it from me… I will leave you all with a few bonus images…
All the best,
Gavin and the T-Team
A Guide to Green Season in Madikwe
Rangers Journal November 2019
RAIN, RAIN BEAUTIFUL
It has arrived!
(ALL IMAGES ARE COPYRIGHT: RUAN SCHUTTE)
We received our first good rains for the season. There is nothing that smells so good then fresh like raindrops on the dry African soil.
So let us start with the great bird and insect life that nice rains have brought us. A lot of our migrants are back and the birdlife is good. All our small and big creepy crawlies have also woken up and are out and about. It is nice looking at the smaller things as well and not just the bigger animals.
All our beautiful wild flowers are coming up and making this wonderful place look even prettier.
Let us talk about what is happening with our lion soapy.
Kwandwe and Monomoholo has been hanging around together for some time down in the South where both of them had the opportunities to grab them each a beautiful girl ( Jamala and Matlapa)and mated with them, so hopefully we should have some little ones in the coming new year.
We had some very good lion sightings lately of lazy, playing, mating, killing and eating lions.
The yellow tag female cheetah has moved more towards the North West of the reserve where she is looking for a good and safe place to give birth . Yes you heard me right, to give birth! She should be giving birth anytime soon in the next weeks. It is sooo exting as Madikwe have not produced baby cheetah for a very long time. EXITING TIMES AHEAD.
Our resident tom leopard Munye has been seen a few times, and has given us some good sightings of him patrolling his territory and also feeding on a young warthog.
Gavin also found a new young female leopard around Inkwe pan which is very exciting news. Hopefully we will see her more often.
The dogs are out and about with the youngsters but are hanging around the East of the reserve for now.
Rhino sightings have been out of this world of both Black and White. We had great Black rhino sightings and as you know they are actually a lot more difficult to find than the white.
For now, I will say Goodbye and farewell, and will pray for more Rains to come.
Greetings Ruan and the T-Team