This is the fourth post from my recent trip to the Masai Mara with CNP. The first post showed a female Hyaenas walking off with a Hippo calf skull after some interaction between three different types of Vulture and a Black-backed Jackal. The second post showed some of the interaction between two of “Scar’s” coalition partners and the Marsh pride. The third showed the dramatic and deadly interaction between the pride and a Leopard family.

This post shows some interaction in the pride and some Lion lessons a few hours or so after the killing of the Leopard cub. The one overriding feature of the pride this day was that it had become enlivened, in strong contrast to what appeared to be a very listless pride the day before. The cubs were playful and despite the different ages and sizes the cubs, piled into each other. It is clear you have to toughen up early in a Lion pride. The next image shows heart and not size in important.

 The robust playing among the cubs has an important role . The cubs start to get the jist of how to tackle prey. This next cub is getting the hang of  attacking its prey from the back – watch out future Buffalo, Zebra and Wildebeest.

“Play energizes us and enlivens us. It eases our burdens. It renews our natural sense of optimism and opens us up to new possibilities.”

– Stuart Brown, MD

During this sighting we were privy to a number of captures and killings of Warthog piglets. The Warthog families would venture out from the trees onto the open grasslands of the conservancy to feed. Once out in the open they were vulnerable. It was fascinating to see the different tactics used by the pride. On this particular day, the pride scattered, lying down in an open dispersed formation. There were very few trees in the conservancy so conventional ambushing was not possible. Once a Warthog family ventured onto the open grassland they would identify one or two Lions but did not see others scattered around in the grass.  This tactic led to six Warthog piglets being caught and killed that day. The adult Warthogs were fast enough to get away, but at least one of their piglets would run into a waiting Lion. The next image shows one of the Lionesses moving into position.

While Lionesses were setting the trap for the unsuspecting Warthog families, the cubs were cavorting. Perhaps even this was a distraction used  by the Lionesses. The next images hows two sub-adults play fighting.

“Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.”

 – Roger von Oech

One of Lionesses managed to catch a Warthog piglet and immediately a cub ran up to her to claim its share. The cub was quickly walked over, literally.

What was particularly interesting about this interaction was that the Lioness would not let the cub have a look in at this potential meal. Despite being swung around like a rag doll, the piglet was still alive.

I can only presume that this cub was closest to her when she caught the piglet but it was not her cub and she was intent on  giving the piglet to her own cubs. The Lioness was not gentle.

The Lioness dropped the injured piglet in some tufts of grass. Any cubs which were not her own were summarily chased away. I am glad I never had an aunt with an attitude like that.

The Lioness swatted one or two over enthusiastic pride cubs making sure her cubs got the live piglet.

It immediately became apparent what she was trying to do. She wanted her cubs to finish off the piglet, a hunting lesson. I was surprised at the aggression and competitiveness of the small cubs. One of the Lioness’s cubs grabbed the piglet by the back of the neck and started to run off with it, but not without stiff competition from a sibling.

“Courage is not having the strength to go on; it is going on when you don’t have the strength.”
― Theodore Roosevelt

The two cubs ran through the grass with their live piglet and their mother riding shotgun.

Needless to say, with an escort like that no other cubs joined the foray.

At no point did the Lioness try to stop the “running of the pig”. Her two cubs were very aggressive and intent on taking the piglet for themselves.

In all my excitement  watching all this action, I forgot to check my shutter speed. The light has dimmed somewhat and the my shutter speed fell sharply. Needless to say, the image of the Lion cub tackling the piglet was, frustratingly, not pin sharp but you get the impression of what was happening. This poor Warthog piglet was getting mauled but was still alive. The cub had it by its ear.

“The one excellent thing that can be learned from a lion is that whatever a man intends doing should be done by him with a whole-hearted and strenuous effort.”

In their mad dash with the piglet, the cubs had unwittingly run straight back towards the sub-adults. One sub-adult decided to knuckle in on the potential meal. The sub-adult grabbed the piglet but one of the small cubs, a female, was not prepared to give in.

I was astounded at the tenacity and aggression of the smaller cub. It had one paw in the sub-adult’s face and three feet trying to keep its balance as it was being dragged along. At this point the piglet was still alive and clearly terrified.

“When you reach the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on.”
― Abraham Lincoln

The sub-adult won the prize and duly despatched the piglet and the Lioness allowed it to happen. One big lesson from this incident, always check your shutter speed no matter how exciting the action is getting. The image on the screen at the back of the camera does not give enough clarity to be really discerning.

After all the excitement the pride settled down but remained dispersed waiting for the next unsuspecting Warthog family to venture into the kill zone. Here a Lioness and her near adult cub were playing.

After play and school time, the pride does have it’s quiet and tender moments.  This was one of those serene times.

“Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says I’ll try again tomorrow.”
― Mary Anne Radmacher

Anyone who has the patience to wait and watch to see the unfolding intelligence of the pride cannot help but be impressed. Humans seem to judge intelligence by their level of consciousness and ability to communicate. Nature  does not reveal its intelligence in necessarily the same way but in my opinion is no less intelligent. The strategies and tactics used by the pride show its natural and effective intelligence.  The adult Lions and the cubs’ ability to control their strength and aggression shows a high level of intelligence. The way the pride moved every day around the edge of the conservancy so as not to overwork any particular area shows natural intelligence. In a small way this shows the vast knowledge and intelligence embedded in nature, most of which humans have still to discover. In Africa, as in many other parts of the world, the problem is that these vast natural libraries of knowledge are being destroyed by the human race’s inability to live in community with nature. Rather the human race is acting more like a ravaging swarm of locusts consuming everything in its path.

“Play is the only way the highest intelligence of humankind can unfold.”

– Joseph Chilton Pearce

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun,

Mike

Half of the Marsh Lion pride was still on the “& Beyond ” conservancy in front of the Kitchwa Tembo camp adjacent to the north-eastern end of the Masai Mara national park. This part of the Marsh pride included four Lionesses, seven cubs and the coalition of four large males – “Scar” and his three coalition partners.

“Wild animals have few rights afforded them by humans, but they have every right to be here”.

– Unknown

This was the third day we had seen the pride which seemed to be methodically working clockwise around the fringe of the open grassland area of the conservancy. Interestingly, the pride did not seem to overwork one particular area. Each day we found the pride further around the conservancy long the edge of the treeline.  It had rained hard the night before and the pride must have had a decent meal because it seemed to be altogether more vital, unlike its listless demeanour the day before.

“A world without the distant roar of lions at dawn as the mist starts to lift is too terrible to contemplate”.

– Dereck Joubert

Our sighting started with a few Lionesses and a couple of the sub-adults lying on top of an anthill. They were alert and carefully watching the goings on around them.

The light remained low due to very overcast conditions. There was a haze which looked like smoke but was in fact moisture. This haze played havoc with the pin-sharpness of our images. Photographing the Lions created depth of field challenges forcing us to push up our camera’s ISO to maintain higher shutter speeds. I was using a 600mm lens with a 1.4 times converter and, using our rule of thumb of 3x the focal length, I needed a minimum shutter speed of around 1/2500 per sec.

After watching this group for about half an hour, around mid-morning the Lionesses began to wander down along the treeline towards the Mara river. One vital aspect about wildlife photography is that photographers need to understand and be able to read animal and bird behaviour. This is vital to be able to better anticipate the shot and improve the resulting image. We were  following the pride slowly along the treeline when our ranger excitedly pointed out that the Lions had surprised a Leopardess and her cub on the ground just inside the treeline.

“It is a curious feature of our existence that we come from a planet that is very good at promoting life but even better at extinguishing it.”

―  Bill Bryson

The Lionesses were just wandering through the trees and bushes along the edge of the open grassland when they surprised the Leopard family. Without hesitation the Lionesses attacked the Leopards. The Leopard cub was caught and the Leopardess given a hard paw swipe but she managed to escape up the tree.

One Lioness immediately mauled the Leopard cub. It died quickly with its mother watching from the tree above. Apart from being upsetting to watch, the incident clearly had a dramatic effect on the pride. The Lionesses were flehmening after having killed the cub and the whole pride was very edgy and kept looking up the tree at the Leopardess.

The Leopardess was helpless and greatly out numbered so stayed up the tree while the Lions were around.

She was clearly upset by what she was watching.

After the Leopard cub had been killed, one of the sub-adults picked it up and began to wander out of the trees into the grass fringe on the edge of the open area.

“Here the ancient spirit of Africa still dwells, crying out for protection so that it may help mankind in this long, often perilous journey to the understanding of the earth and ourselves.”

 -Dr Ian Player

This was certainly one of the more difficult incidents we have witnessed. There was no attempt to eat the Leopard cub but the Lion cubs and sub- adults seemed to be spellbound by what they had just experienced.

The pride followed the sub-adult who had wandered into the open with the Leopard cub. The next image shows just how hyped the pride was by the incident.

The sub-adults were intrigued by the limp Leopard cub and one by one came to smell it. Interestingly, the sub-adults did not exhibit the flemen response only the adults. Perhaps this is a learned response.

The one sub-adult who had wandered into the open with the dead Leopard cub was protective about its catch. At no point did the sub-adult attempt to bite the Leopard cub further or try to eat it.

Perhaps half an hour after the incident, the Lions moved off leaving the dead Leopard cub lying in the grass. This seemed to be a classic example of dispatching the competition. The Leopardess remained up the tree long after the Lions had left the area.

“The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.”

– Ed Abbey

Eventually and very warily, the Leopardess descended the tree to search for her cub.

The Leopardess could not see her cub so started to wander around in the grass fringe.

Humans are hardly aware of the “scent picture” left at the scene. There must have been heavy mixed Lion scent all around this area. Watching the Leopardess, it seems the scents lingering around the scene create what must amount to a mental picture of what had just happened.

The leopardess could not see her cub and could not identify, scent wise, exactly where it was lying.  We could see her cub lying in the open behind large tufts of grass. The Leopardess was not prepared to risk moving further into the open grass after what had just happened. After around ten minutes she melted back into the trees. We assumed she would come later, perhaps when it was dark to remove her dead cub. Female Leopards have been known to eat their dead cubs to remove the evidence to prevent Jackals, Hyaenas and vultures from feeding on them.

We went back the next morning to see what had happened and the dead Leopard cub had not be touched. We were surprised as there were many Hyaena and Jackals around. We later heard from other rangers that the Leopardess returned to her cub.

As wildlife photographers we stand by the principle of not interfering with or manipulating the natural behaviour of the wildlife to achieve more dramatic images. The more time you spend in the bush watching wildlife, the better you get to understand its behaviour and marvel at its natural intelligence. This respect and knowledge is the best way to improve the quality of your images – not behavioural manipulation.

I have been into the bush regularly over the past 50 years and have never seen this type Lion-Leopard interaction. I am immensely grateful for the privilege. It is only the human condition which applies a moral judgement to nature’s outcomes.

“Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless.”

 – Ed Abbey

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun,

Mike

There are an estimated 19,409 white rhinos and 1,752 black rhinos in South Africa. Since 1970 poachers have killed 90% of the rhino population in South Africa. – https://www.environment.gov.za/mediarelease/molewa_integratedstrategicmanagement_rhinoceros

Source:outlaw.org.za

A new record level of rhino deaths was achieved in South Africa in 2014  –  1215.

Source: http://www.savetherhino.org/rhino_info/poaching_statistics

If the rhino population in South Africa is currently around 21,000  and the poaching rate in 2014 was a mind-blogging 1215, equates to a poaching rate of 5.8% per annum in 2014. I cannot find the natural death rate statistic for rhino in South Africa but it is probably one to two percent, at least. The combined poaching and natural mortality rate is therefore somewhere between 6.5% and 8.0%. The estimated rhino birth rate is between 6% and 7% per annum. This implies that the rhino population in South Africa, despite all the efforts of so many hardworking dedicated people trying to stop the poaching, is about to resume its decline.

If the current poaching growth trend is not stopped, South Africa will lose 1,460 rhino in 2015 and 1750 in 2016 – on so on and so on!!! 

This escalating level of poaching implies greater numbers of armed gangs in our game parks – the new terrorism!!!!

This is the second post from my recent trip to the Masai Mara with CNP.

“Whatever you are physically…male or female, strong or weak, ill or healthy–all those things matter less than what your heart contains. If you have the soul of a warrior, you are a warrior. All those other things, they are the glass that contains the lamp, but you are the light inside.”
― Cassandra Clare

We drove onto the Kitchwa Tembo conservancy, which is about 10 square kilometres and stretches out in front of the Kitchwa Tembo tented camp for about three kilometres down to the Mara river on its eastern boundary. This conservancy is adjacent to the north-eastern boundary of the Masai Mara national park. One of the key advantages of operating on the conservancy is that we were allowed to drive off-road so could get the sun behind us and get manoeuver to achieve better perspectives.

We were bedeviled by the weather. Each night it would rain hard and the mornings would be heavily overcast with a mist which looked like a smoke haze until midday. The haze eased but did not go away in the afternoons. We were told by our ranger that this was atypical weather. Photographers have to learn to work with the weather rather than against it. There was one advantage in that the haze reduced the contrast in the afternoons but it did remove some of the pin sharpness in the images despite high shutter speeds.

We had heard that half of the Marsh pride had crossed onto the west side of the Mara river. The ruling coalition of four big male lions, “Scar” and his three brothers had followed half the pride, a group comprising 11 Lionesses and cubs. After finding the Lionesses and cubs on the conservancy near the airstrip the afternoon we arrived and went out looking for them late this particular morning once there was enough light.

We found the pride of Lionesses and cubs which we had seen the day before but they were not looking in good shape and appeared listless. The sub-adults and cubs were very thin and the cubs did not play at all. At the very northern part of the conservancy, we found one of the four coalition males. He was a massive specimen and emerged from the treeline at the edge of the open grassland.

There was very little going on and the male was just surveying the scene when his attention suddenly fixed on something in the distant grassland. He had spotted one of the Lionesses who had caught a Warthog piglet. Immediately he got up and began running about 400 metres to her.

The male ran passed a small herd of Buffalo. The next images shows the scene in front of the Kitchwa Tembo camp.

Warthog families would emerge from the tree line to forage on the open grassland area of the conservancy. Once in the open they were vulnerable to predation by Lion. Although the grass was low on the conservancy the Warthogs could often not see the Lions because of the undulations and large tufts of grass and there were distractions from the many animals on the conservancy. The next images show the initial score – Lions one and Warthog family minus one. The Lioness started to eat the piglet as fast as she could, probably knowing the male would appropriate her prize.

The piglet was just enough for one Lion so the Lioness tried to get away to eat in peace.

Once the male got to the Lioness she tried to run away with her kill but there was no negotiation the male just piled in a took it from her.

The Lions’ antics had not gone unnoticed by the Buffalo bulls. The male Lion had to pick up his stolen goods and retreat in the face of an aggressive onslaught from the Buffalo.

All the attention had brought the second male out of the treeline. He did not try to knuckle in. Both males looked in good shape in stark contrast to the thin sub-adults and cubs who were at the bottom of the feeding hierarchy.

When one sees how male Lions kill cubs that are not their own, it is remarkable to see the tolerance they have for their own cubs.

The males eventually got together. The next image disguises the deadliness and power of these males. This relaxed position can change to full combat mode in an instant.

Comrades in defence but independent seekers of females.

A close-up of one of the four males in “Scar’s” coalition – a magnificent big cat!

Before long this big male got up and started to wander down to where the Lionesses had begun another hunt.

When close to big male Lion one’s heart does skip a beat to two. We never got to see all four together. This must be an almost invincible coalition at this point.

Interesting how the change in perspective alters the apparent shape of his face.

“There is a way that nature speaks, that land speaks. Most of the time we are simply not patient enough, quiet enough, to pay attention to the story.”

-Linda Hogan

The Lionesses’ hunting tactics were fascinating to watch. There was no chance of a surprise attack in the open so they started a “divide and conquer” approach to open up the herd. Lionesses would take turns to draw different Buffalo out of the herd. Slowly but surely the Lionesses managed to open up the herd enough for two Lionesses to separate one Buffalo. The Lionesses quickly took down the separated Buffalo among some small bushes in the conservancy grassland. The bellowing of the fallen Buffalo was a call for help. This came quickly in the form of an intimidating wall of agitated Buffalo.

It did not take long before the Buffalo had forced the Lionesses off their catch. What was surprising was the two large males did nothing to help the Lionesses at a time when a large meal for the pride was desperately needed to feed the younger members of the pride. Three Buffalo escorted their injured herd member away from the scene while the remaining Buffalo chased the Lionesses in the opposite direction.

After the one male had stolen a piglet from one of his Lionesses and the females had not managed to kill the downed Buffalo. The two big males decided to look for a little more peace and quiet.

“Nature is man’s teacher. She unfolds her treasures to his search, unseals his eye, illumes his mind, and purifies his heart; an influence breathes from all the sights and sounds of her existence.”

-Alfred Bernhard Nobel

Explore, seek to understand, marvel at its inter-connectedness and let it be.

Have fun,

Mike