From last week: "I wept at the airstrip before flying out, I didn't want to leave" ... aah.... a Kicheche remainer. *

Spotters, meet Murray, no stranger to this mercurial mail-out and indeed one of Bush Camp’s favourite sons. Murray has been a regular for many years but this January has outdone himself, with a whole pick and mix of cats with their candy-faced cubs.

The Kicheche inbox is filled with many sorts of pictorial correspondence, some of it precious, much of it delightful yet whimsical flotsam

Mara North Maestro Jimmy Tinka captures marvellous 'frame' before the River pride captures young giraffe

Don't know where you spent Christmas this year, I don't suppose Jackie Turner really cares as she found herself almost knee-deep in cats of all sizes at Bush Camp. Lions with eyes still only half open and a suitably topical leaping leopard.

Kevin Rooney is one of Kicheche's favourite sons with hundreds of game drives augmenting his Conservancy masthead.

If you are going to pick a fight it is not just about numbers. Bantam weights should never get into the ring with Heavy weights, even if there are five of them.

When the combined weight of knowledge from three veteran guides with over 100,000 game drives tells me a leopard has had her cubs within the last few days, I am inclined to believe them. The soft folds of fur near her tail confirm this as does her behavior. Fig’s well documented pregnancy is over.

In this week’s London Evening Standard there was a feature on the Mara’s nemesis: the Serengeti. Apart from some chintzy nonsense about jeweled salads and a farcical faunal faux pas about okapis butting horns (surely topis) it was none too shabby…

Too often awards are concocted, self-serving and cynical: ‘you advertise in our Bush Companion and we’ll give you a worthless accolade,’ or the winner is the one that garners the most solicited support on social media.