Wild dog sightings: 12 ( red data book: endangered)
Leopard sightings: 33
Lion sightings: 68
Serval sightings: 8 (red data book: rare. CITES appendix ll)
Sharpe's grysbok sightings: 6 (red data book: rare)
Aardvark sightings: 2 (red data book: vulnerable. CITES appendix ll)
2 honey badgers climbing about 7m up a winter thorn tree - one of four sightings of badgers climbing high into trees looking for hives
5 honey badgers climbing the same tree on the next night looking to open up a bee hive a long way up a dead hollow winter thorn branch
Bizarre honey badger behaviour, when busy digging a burrow one will be sleeping while the other will be hard at work sometimes covering the sleeping partner (usually the female) with the sand of his diggings - 3 sightings of such disrespectful and nonchalant activity!
A honey badger with a live 2,5m black mamba in his teeth (on a morning walk) watched him for about 20 min and then he casually walked away with his tender meal.
African rock python 2m long curled up around a branch in a tree on a island in the Zambezi.
One very hot afternoon in the Zambezi valley 23 mature elephant bulls walked into camp and entertained Old Mondoro guests for the afternoon, elephant watching at its best!
Leopards mating. Two lovers started mating only to be joined by another lustful female. The next night we saw the same male mating with the same younger smaller female again. 4 sightings of leopards mating (WOW) in 2005.
Getting up one morning I heard impala alarm calling very close to camp, run out and wake up David Back with the Artillery group, shoving them in the Land Rover with great haste. We found the 3 lionesses and the 3 cubs not even 300m from camp looking a bit hungry. The young lioness being a bit of a brave heart spotted a old lone buff bull and started running circles around him and playing a death game, not for the bull but for her! She did get the other 2 lionesses interested in the game and we watched while the 3 lionesses chasing the bull for about 2km and then they realized that the bull was a bit too strong for them so they gave up. While sitting and watching the lionesses going back to meet the cubs, another series of impala alarm calling in the direction of the camp, I raced back to see what all the excitement was all about, only to find a male leopard with a female bushbuck in his mouth (!) and in attendance, wait for it.... a very horny female leopard, this all about 150m from camp in only a few minutes! We then saw this female trying to convince the male to mate with her on two more nights just outside camp.
A female leopard killed a female impala one night where we park our boat, dragged it up the steps and left it 100m at the base of a termite mound, returning that same night to collect the meat from right under our noses !!
Then of course the fabulous 3 lionesses together with the cubs taking down a elephant calf. We were watching the lionesses lying on the Chakwenga riverbed as the sun was going down after a drink from a pool in the river, after what sounded like a very stressed out elephant screaming his head of, the lionesses got up and very slowly and looking very relaxed started walking along the edge of the riverbed, I decided to follow but had to drive around because they were going into very long adrenalin grass... on arrival we found them all over the elephant calf already on his side after a full attack by the 3 lionesses. What followed was Africa at its merciless best right in our faces as we watched predator and prey fighting to stay alive, the lions to kill and provide food for themselves and the cubs, and the elephant calf trying to stay alive ... it took the lions almost 2 hours to finish of the calf... Africa painting a picture not many people have witnessed before with sounds, smells...
A herd of buffalo about 800-strong walking the floodplains of Old Mondoro.
A female leopard with a big male serval she killed only minutes before we arrived, dragged it into grass and started eating it, only to leave it and started stalking impala about 20m from us.
An old male lion arrived on the lion scene... looking for food and a chance to mate with one of the lionesses in estrus... with no canine teeth left in his mouth... Would have been a lovely male in his prime but for obvious reasons the lionesses did not welcome him afraid that he will kill the cubs so we saw a big fight between the female in estrus and the male, the male being very submissive. Interesting that the lionesses only made an effort to hide the male cub of the three and not the 2 female cubs.
The male lion did however play a role, watching the lions rest one afternoon a big herd of buff came down to the Chakwenga to drink but did not spot the male lion or the 3 lionesses under a winterthorn tree, suddenly the male got up and without doing much of a stalk walked down towards the herd of buff... the lionesses sensed that something is about to happen and were in hunting mode almost immediately! The male charged the herd creating confusion and the lionesses ambushed a young buffalo... Needless to say, the male only got some intestines. We watched and listened as the lions feasted well into the dark African night...
Good bird sightings include regular sightings of groups of Lillian's lovebirds close to the Chakwenga plains and the Mushika river, bat hawks, broadbilled rollers, swallowtailed bee-eater, African skimmers, bohms spinetail, pennant-winged nightjar, freckled nightjar, marsh owl, white-faced scops-owl, giant eagle owl on nest with chick, lesser jacana, long-tailed paradise-whydah breeding male, golden-breasted bunting male, redwinged pratincole, black- bellied bustard male & female, western banded snake-eagle, long- crested eagle, racket-tailed roller, crested guineafowl.
Wild dogs trying to kill a big warthog male, the warthog did most of the chasing with wild dogs running all over the place at Jeki plains, they did however kill a young female warthog about 30 min later
Wild dogs killing an impala on Jeki airstrip on full moon night.
A beautiful blond male lion walked through camp at seven o clock one night with his tracks all around the dining table as we sat down for dinner.
"Norman" the camp hippo comes running through camp often to hide from the resident dominant bull chasing him, and spends his nights sleeping at our doorstep and eating winter thorn tree pods in camp!
On a walk we stood frozen as a family of dwarf mongooses climbed on a termite mound about 2m from our party as if we were not there. We watched and photographed them for almost 45min before we left.
Spotted a porcupine sleeping in the early morning sun in a hollow broken down tree trunk and approached very closely before he scampered away much to the delight of the lucky guests.
The game viewing and overall safari experience at Old Mondoro has been going from strength to strength and 2005 was simply phenomenal – guests have all enjoyed the intimate and wild location of what has become one of Zambia’s most sought after bush camps and which remains the only bush camp in the Lower Zambezi. 
