One of the things that excites us most as guides, is when we document new lions in our area. Early this morning, I heard a lioness calling on the floodplain, just north of the Lodge. I was just waking up as it happened, so Lesh and I drove out to the area to look for her. Xigera is like a park at the moment with short lush green grass in the areas where there were fires last year.

We could not find tracks and they did not roar again to help us. We continued searching carefully and slowly to make certain we did not miss anything. Just then I noticed two red lechwe tense up and look in one direction with a fixed stare – a sure sign they had seen something. I told Lesh and he was already looking in the right direction and saw a lion approaching.

In all, we found four of them who were all young. Two young males we had seen a few days earlier, in the evening and another young male aged about two and half years and a young female.

We then had a great sighting of the lone older male asserting his dominance over the two younger ones; there was a lot of growling and slapping but no lion was hurt. The two younger males decided to go and find some shade and the other two moved off in a different direction for the day.

Lion's rolling in the grass