Kaboso Again

Serval in the long grass

Setting off on our third full day, the only sensible plan was to head for where we had last seen Kaboso. That was after all what we had decided over dinner the previous night. But we never got there.

As we headed that way we got a call to say a Serval had been spotted and we had some ground to make up to get to the location. I have a pecking order in my mind where a Leopard sighting will always get precedence over a Cheetah sighting, which in turn trumps a Lion sighting. However, a Serval, Caracal or Wildcat will always take precedence due to their rarity.

On this occasion we were lucky and the Serval was still in open grassland when we arrived, albeit difficult to locate due to the length of the grass. We spent almost 30 minutes and took a huge number of images in the hope of capturing something that wasn’t affected by the long grass. Needless to say a large number have been deleted.

Once the cat had melted away into the grass, we headed off to our next sighting and unsurprisingly it was the Double Cross/Enkoyonai pride of Lions and Olbarnoti once more mating with his lady friend. After spending some time with them (how many shots of mating Lions do we actually need), it took us nicely into time for a relaxed bush breakfast. Little did we know just what was to follow.

With the inner man satisfied, we set off once more and soon got word of a Cheetah sighting, which pleased me straight away. When we arrived, we found it was a Cheetah we had not seen before, called Mugie. This turned out to be a sighting that lasted more than three and a half hours and ended in the kill shown in the image attached to last week’s post.

There was a large herd of Thomson’s Gazelles on the open plain and at first Mugie was well hidden from them. He soon broke cover, although still at a distance from which he couldn’t successfully hunt, but gradually he edged closer. The natural grazing of the gazelles took them away from him, but then inexplicably they started to move back towards his position. Other animals on the plain were well aware of his presence and keeping a watchful eye on him.

To the left of our position was a row of bushes and eventually Mugie walked down the other side of the bushes out of sight of the gazelles. Nearly two and a half hours had passed by now, but then suddenly there was action and we had to hurriedly reposition. There were some stray gazelles near the bottom of the line of bushes and it was these that Mugie had managed to stalk until he got close enough to be able to strike. He actually took the gazelle down as it ran into a flooded area and swiftly dragged it into a bush where we witnessed the kill with Mugie’s jaws clamped around the gazelle’s throat. Once he was sure it was dead, he set about lunch, reminding us that we were an hour and a half late having ours. We withdrew and went off to find some welcome shade.

Once lunch was over we set off to find the Fig Tree Pride of lions, which we managed quite easily, beside the Talek River. They were accompanied by the most obnoxious smell imaginable, emanating from a giraffe carcass they had secreted in the bushes. It was unbearable and we had to retreat to a different spot where the air was much fresher.

The Fig Tree pride is quite large and at this time had a number of cubs. They were under various bushes in the location and just when you thought you had counted how many there were, another would appear. We spent much of the remaining afternoon with them and shot a number of images of black-faced cubs and mothers washing them. The vultures started to congregate, but still the lions would go back to the carcass clearly not ready to give up the kill just yet.

Moving away, a rather handsome Elephant entertained us for a while, but it was time to head back to camp. On the way we decided to call in to Mugie’s last location and he had certainly had a good feed. We found him easily enough in the open not ten metres from his kill, very sleepy and with a very full belly. Another superb day in the Mara ended.