Kenya Stop #3, Maasai Mara Aug 30

 Early wake up call.  This is the view, over my coffee cup, from the room.

Its beautiful, but its also time to go.  Water, camera, and an insulated poncho and we're ready to explore.  As I intimated earlier, we have only a short distance to go.  Within 10 minutes, we have found a lion pride.  There were about a dozen cats, from youths to adult females spread across the savannah.  The most interesting group were initially poking around in a hole.

There was obviously something there, but they never dug it out.  Later (an hour or more later), it would turn out that it was a warthog in the hole.  He had backed down into the hole and the only thing we could see was his snout, complete with some razor sharp tusks.  No wonder lion cubs couldn't get him out.  

This led to cheering from Sue.  If I haven't imparted just how much Sue enjoys warthogs, let me try.  She calls to each one by name.  The name comes from Lion King, but it is also Kenyan authentic.  

"Poom - bah"  "Oh, they're so cute!"  "I just love when they run!"  Frankly, it was great.  You could hear her voice go up and the joy with every sighting.  There were a lot of sightings.  Literally hundreds.  So, when a single Poom-bah stood his ground against an entire pride . . . let's just say that Sue made sure the scoreboard reflected 

Lions 0

Poom-bah 1

The lions were all over the place.  There were more than a dozen in a fairly small area and they just roamed about.  The adults were attentive, the kids were . . . kids.  Lots of playing, climbing trees but not very well, and just generally being big cats.  After 45 minutes or so of watching them bounce around, we headed to another area.  

Where we saw this pregnant giraffe browsing.  They eat a lot of acacia, in spite of the thorns.  Can't imagine doing that, but they do it all day long.  Ladies: gestation period = 18 months.  

Next we went searching for cheetah.  We didn't find yesterday's cheetah, we found a different one, who was out with her cub.  The cub is fairly big, probably 18 months.

They roamed around, with the youngster chasing a jackal away repeatedly.  Jackals may be cute, but they are also pests, we would learn.  They hang out, waiting for scraps.  They're pretty quick and they are really not worth killing, so they just lurk around like that nerdy little kid you never liked growing up.  If you are a predator, they are quite annoying.  If you are a paying tourist, they add to the show.  I don't have great video of any of cheetah chases, they are just so darned fast, but I do have this.

A bit later, Momma took off. 

She was moving toward a herd of wildebeest, which we didn't understand.  They are just too big for her.  Then suddenly she cut through the herd and hit top gear.  That's when we sort of lost her.  Man, she is fast !  Top speed is about 70 mph.  But we were pretty sure she had made a kill, as much as anything because we could no longer see her.  So we took off.  Really fast.  We were doing about 40 mph across open ground, hoping not to lose her.  By good fortune, we found her under a bush with her prize.  You can see just how hard it is to catch a gazelle by watching her catch her breath.  This is probably only 2 minutes after the kill.

She drags the kill under a bush so that the vultures are less likely to see her.  If the vultures find her, it is also more likely that a hyena or a lion will find her.  And they will steal her kill.  She's not a fighter, she's a sprinter with teeth.  

Momma began to emit high pitched chirping noises to get her cub to the site.  The cub showed up and they began to feed once they had both caught their breath.  The jackals hung around the whole time.  Even though this cub is probably 18 months old, Mike didn't think he had ever made a kill.  That was pretty easy to believe, since the cub didn't even start eating at the right end of the gazelle.  In case you didn't know, you start at the hindquarters, not at the head.  Silly youngster.  But Momma showed him and he got with the program.

We finished out the morning with another breakfast on the open plains.  Its quite a setting.  You just have to be a bit careful, because apparently lions look at you differently when you are in a truck and when you are on the ground.  So, we made sure that we had a huge buffer from any lions.

In the afternoon game drive, of course we continued to see large numbers of wildebeest, impala, and Thompson's gazelle.  Some zebra, some giraffe, some cape buffalo.  But we were looking for the big cats and we found them.  Sorry Sue.  It isn't always good for the Poom-bah.

After watching the feeding for 15 minutes, we could tell that this would last a while, so we moved on.  John still wanted to see the cheetah again and Mike was up to the challenge.  We went back to the area of the kill and found the two cheetahs further away.  They had moved for the evening to a new location.  This would turn out to be very smart.

If she had stayed at the site of the kill, with all of the associated smells, this probably would have gone badly.  Because hyena found nothing worth scuffling over, the hyena moved on and the cheetah pair settled back down for the night.

This was one of the things that we loved about our guide interactions throughout the trip.  The extra insight that they are able to impart about why the animals behave the way they do was the spice.  

For example, if I haven't already explained this, lions tend to hunt at sunrise and sunset.  So, cheetah waits until 8:00 a.m. to start thinking about a kill.  By then, lions are starting to settle in for their daytime nap.  Which means that they won't be stealing the kill.  If cheetah gets something quickly, they can drag it under a bush before the vultures are really out in numbers.  It is still too cold in the winter months to have created thermals.  Without thermals, which make vultures job of soaring so much easier, they are basically grounded.  So, with good timing, no one knows that cheetah has a kill and cheetah can spend many fruitful hours feeding.  

That night, from about 9:00 to 11:00 we heard lions roaring and hyenas barking back at what seemed like very close distances from camp.  It wasn't just a few lions and hyenas, it was a lot.  They were probably arguing over a kill right there in our back yard.  We did not wander around that night !  Actually, we never wandered around at night, but it was especially true that night.