Tiger sightings are always exciting, whether it’s an individual tiger or two or a streak of tigers. You would always encounter some interesting behaviour during each sighting.
During one of my recent visits to the park, we got information about some action happening in one of the regions of the park. I briefed my guests about the same and we went straight towards that area.
We saw that there was a female (numbered T-27 by the forest department) sitting by the side of the road. This female has 3 cubs (8-9 months old), but they seemed not to be present with her.
While we were engaged with this sighting, we didn’t realise that there was a male tiger (T-24) (not the father of her cubs), sitting on the road, but behind some trees (and hence was out of our sight). The guests with me in the vehicle were excited to see two adult tigers and their interactions with each other.
The male and the female had some interaction and it was a delight to see them in conversation. The male was trying to mate with the female, but she was not allowing him to do so and there seemed to be some argument going on between both of them.
Suddenly, we noticed the left front leg of the male tiger showed injury marks, which indicated that he has been in some fight, but the female didn’t had any wound signs. Then what was it?
The male turned around and gave a challenging look towards the opposite side, something we never expected.
The biggest tiger of the Mukki Zone (T-30) (another male who is not the father of the cubs) was in the bushes at the edge of the road growled loudly.
They had a small fight and this created thrill amongst all the viewers who were present at the sighting. Afterwards we met tourists from another vehicle who were doing a full day safari and they informed us that this action had been happening since late afternoon.
After all this action, the tree tigers were seemed to be sitting peacefully close to each other.
This was once in a lifetime sighting for all to see two adult male tigers and one female tiger, with all the interactions they had.
Sachin Sharma
Naturalist, Singinawa Jungle Lodge
